JANUARY  2022 - TOPICS

Short News Obituary Constantin Caroubalos (1928-2021) Elections of Hel.A.S. The IAU call for amateur and professional astronomers collaboration survey Satellite constellation and Solar observations Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. Short News

The GC wishes to all members of Hel.A.S. a Happy, Healthy and Productive NEW YEAR 2022! We would like to congratulate Dr. Antonios Antoniou who has recently moved to a Special Research Teaching Personnel (EEDIP) position to the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the University of the Peloponnese. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits.

2. Obituary Constantin Caroubalos (1928-2021)

The GC of HelAS would like to inform all members that Constantin Caroubalos, Emeritus Professor of Electronics, at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, Greece, passed away on December 4, 2021. Prof. Caroubalos was born in Patras, Greece, on August 5, 1928. He received the B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Athens, Greece (1953), and an M.Sc. in Radioelectrology from the same University (1956). He then moved to France where he received a Certificate in Electronics at Orsay (1961) completed a thesis of 3me cycle from CEA/Saclay (1961) and the Doctorat d’ Etat, from the University of Paris (1964). He started his academic career as a researcher at CNRS/France (1967-1975). He moved back to Greece in 1975 as a Professor of Electronics at the Department of Physics of the University of Athens, as well as Director of the Ionospheric Institute of the National Observatory of Athens (1976-1989). He also served as Chairman of the Dept. of Physics during 1984-1989. In 1989 he moved as a Professor to the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the Univ. of Athens, from where he retired and became Emeritus in 1997. His scientific interests included Radio observations of the Sun, the ionospheric physics, digital signal processing, as well as digital telecommunications.

3. Elections to Hel.A.S.

The Governing Council of the Hel.A.S. informs all members that the next elections for the Council of the Society for 2022-2024 term will take place during the month of June 2022, along with the 41th General Assembly (GA). The date and time of the GA and the elections will be announced in the newsletter of February 1st, 2022. The call for nominations and the corresponding forms are already available in the "News and Events" section of the Society's website. More information on the forthcoming GA and the elections will become available in the following Newsletters. The elections will be organized according to the new Constitution of our Society which was approved during the 39th GA. Please note that according to Article 29 of the Constitution only Ordinary Members of the Society who have no outstanding membership fees, that is they have paid the 2021 membership fee, may nominate themselves or other Ordinary Members for the Council. Moreover, all candidates must be residing in Greece during the time of their term in office (Article 27), as well as that the nomination forms have to be returned to the Secretary of the Society no later than February 28, 2022.

4. The IAU call for amateur and professional astronomers collaboration survey

The IAU had initiated a survey to help the collaboration between amateur and professional astronomers.The IAU propose to us to take a few minutes to complete the survey before January 31, 2022. The IAU announcement is here: IAU announcement. The link to the survey is here: Survey.

5. Satellite constellation and Solar observations

Dr. Piero Benvenuti, IAU representative to UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, address a request to the members of IAU Division E, searching information on groups/organizations who have performed or are performing analyses on the interferences by satellite constellations on solar observations. The aim is to include them on developing mitigating strategies by the new Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Skies.

6. Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S.

We are happy to announce that the January 2022 colloquium speaker is Prof. Demos Kazanas. As usual, videos of all past colloquia are available in the Youtube channel of the Society. Details of the upcoming colloquium follow: 13th Monthly Colloquium of HelAS - 14 January 2022 "X-ray Absorbers: A Rosetta Stone to AGN Phenomenology? " by Dr. Demos Kazanas (NASA/GSFC) Tuesday, 11 January 2022 at 17:30 Athens time (UTC + 2:00) Click for ZOOM link (Meeting ID: 929 0833 2653 and Passcode: 872223) Abstract: Analysis of the spectroscopic properties of AGN Warm Absorbers (WAs) in AGN indicate that the mass flux of the associated winds increases with distance from the accreting black hole (BH), a property most simply interpreted with WAs being MHD winds launched across the entire domain of an accretion disk over a range that spans 5-6 decades in radius. As a consequence, the mass accretion rate of the underlying accretion disk must decrease with distance from the BH. This implies that interior to some transition radius, rt, the local accretion rate becomes smaller than alpha2 (alpha is the disk viscosity parameter). As such, for r < rt the disk converts to a hot RIAF responsible for the high energy (X-ray) AGN emission (which now becomes an integral part of the global accretion budget rather than that of a corona of ad hoc luminosity), with the UV-O emission restricted to radii r > rt, while the AGN tori being the wind segment launched at the disk's outer edge. It is shown that this proposal reproduces the broad AGN SED properties (and also at least some of the Galactic BH Binary properties) in terms of a single parameter the dimensionless disk accretion rate, either at its inner or outer edges, providing a highly economical view of accretion powered sources.

7. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece

COSPAR 2022 44th Scientific Assembly 16-24 July 2022, Athens.

8. About this Newsletter

This Newsletter was sent to all members of Hel.A.S. who have e-mail access. The next edition of the Newsletter will be mailed around February 1, 2022.  Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before January 25, 2022. If you do not wish to receive future issues of this Newsletter or the e-mail address to which it was sent is not your preferred one, please inform the Secretary of Hel.A.S. at secretary@helas.gr.