APRIL  2022 - TOPICS

Short News Elections of Hel.A.S. Elections of an EAS Councilor Summer School of Hel.A.S. Two post-doctoral positions at IAASARS-NOA Post-doctoral and PhD positions at IA-FORTH ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme (autumn 2022, winter 2023) Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. Short News

We would like to congratulate Dr. Leonidas Moustakas who was recently promoted to Deputy Manager for the NASA JPL Science Division which manages the Astrophysics, Planetary and Earth Science Sections at JPL. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Prof. Chryssa Kouveliotou, Chair of the Dept. of Physics at George Washington University (USA) and founding member of our Society, who was recently appointed member of the governing body of the European Research Council (ERC), the Scientific Council. The ERC Scientific Council, composed of 22 distinguished scientists and scholars representing the European scientific community, is the independent governing body of the ERC. Its main role is setting the ERC strategy and selecting the peer review evaluators. We would like to congratulate Dr. Evangelos Paouris who recently moved to a Postdoctoral Researcher position at George Mason University (USA). Dr. Paouris is performing his research at the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University (USA) under the supervision of Dr. Angelos Vourlidas. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Konstantinos Kouroumpatzakis who was awarded a postdoctoral researcher position at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague and will be moving there in early summer. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Aris Tritsis who was recently awarded a prestigious 4 year Ambizione grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Dr. Tritsis will join the Astrophysics Group at Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, later this year to perform his project “HOMERIC-Halo's magnetic field as evident from striated interstellar clouds”. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. All members are encouraged to review the minutes of the 16th meeting of the Governing Council of HelAS, which took place on March 2, 2022.

2. Elections to Hel.A.S.

The Governing Council (GC) of the Hel.A.S. would like to remind all members that the next elections for the Council of the Society for the 2022-2024 term will take place on Friday June 24 2022, along with the 41th General Assembly (GA). The deadline for nominations ended on February 28, 2022 and on March 5, 2022 the Governing Council approved all nominations received. These were: Candidate for President of the GC: Prof. V. Charmandaris (Univ. of Crete) Candidates for Members of the GC: Dr. G. Balasis (IAASARS/NOA), Prof. K. Gourgouliatos (Univ. of Patras), Dr. E. Koulouridis (IAASARS/NOA), Dr. A. Papaioanou (IAASARS/NOA), Prof. M. Petropoulou (Univ. of Athens), Prof. K. Tassis (Univ. of Crete) Candidates for Auditors: Dr. J. Antoniadis (IA/FORTH), Dr. O. Giannakis (IAASARS/NOA), Dr. M. Harsoula (Academy of Athens) Brief CVs of all candidates is available here. The Governing Council also selected the three members of the Committee which according to Article 34 of the Constitution will be responsible for the organisation of the elections which will take place electronically. These were: Dr. A. Anastasiadis (IAASARS/NOA) as President, as well as Prof. V. Pavlidou (Univ. of Crete) and Prof. A. Zezas (Univ. of Crete) as members.

3. Summer School of Hel.A.S.

After a two year delay due to the pandemic, the 4th summer school of the Society, entitled "The Milky Way Galaxy - Formation and Evolution", will take place in Athens during 25-27 July 2022. More information for the summer school, which is also sponsored by the Univ. of Athens, is available here.

4. Two post-doctoral positions at IAASARS-NOA

Two post-doctoral positions on extragalactic astrophysics are available at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory Athens funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation. The expected starting date of the posts is Autumn 2022 for a duration of up to 30 months. Interested parties contact Dr. Antonis Georgakakis (age@noa.gr) for more details.

5. Positions in extragalactic astrophysics at IA-FORTH

Two (2) postdoctoral researcher and two (2) PhD student positions on extragalactic astrophysics with emphasis on radio data analysis, are available at the Institute of Astrophysics, FORTH. The selected individuals will be funded by the ERC project "SMILE: Search for milli-lenses to discriminate between dark matter models" and they will work under the supervision of Dr. Carolina Casadio. The expected starting date of the posts is September 2022. More information is available here. Interested parties may contact Dr. Carolina Casadio for more details. One (1) postdoctoral researcher and one (1) PhD student position on extragalactic astrophysics with emphasis on Infrared Extra-galactic Astrophysics, are available at the Institute of Astrophysics, FORTH. The selected individuals will be funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (ELIDEK) project entitled: "XTREME: The Extended Interstellar Medium of Extreme Galaxies", under the supervision of Dr. Tanio Diaz Santos. The expected starting date of the posts is September 2022. More information is available here. Interested parties may contact Dr. Diaz Santos for more details.

6. ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme (autumn 2022, winter 2023)

The European Space Agency (ESA) welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research projects based on data publicly available in the ESA Space Science Archive https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc. The ESA Archival Research Visitor Programme is open to scientists, at all career levels, affiliated with institutes in ESA Member States and Collaborating States. Early-career scientists (within 10 years of the PhD) are particularly encouraged to apply. Applications by PhD students are also welcome. Residence lasts typically between one and three months. Research projects can be carried out at ESAC (Madrid, Spain) and at ESTEC (Noordwijk, The Netherlands). Applications received by 30 April 2022 will be considered for visits in autumn/winter 2022/2023. For further details, including areas of research and contact information, please refer to https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/visitor-programme

7. Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S.

We are happy to announce that the April 2022 colloquium speaker is Dr. George Chintzoglou. As usual, videos of all past colloquia are available in the Youtube channel of the Society. Details of the upcoming colloquium follow: 16th Monthly Colloquium of HelAS - 12 April 2022 " The new solar space mission MUSE " by Dr. George Chintzoglou, Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab Tuesday, 12 April 2022 at 18:00 Athens time (UTC + 3:00) Click for ZOOM link (Meeting ID: 975 5390 4420 and Passcode: 467319) Abstract: In February 2022, NASA selected the Multi-Slit Solar Explorer (MUSE) to become the first solar astrophysics mission of NASA’s Middle-class Explorer (MIDEX) fleet to help improve our understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible for the heating of the solar corona, and to understand the cause of solar flares and eruptions, the most energetic events in our solar system. Solar flares and solar eruptions also power the so-called “Space Weather” near Earth which can threaten our modern technological civilization and human space exploration. The MUSE mission will carry two instruments, (a) a context imager, and (b) a multi-slit spectrograph, both of which are designed to image solar plasma structures and their evolution across a range of temperatures typically found in the solar transition region and in the solar corona (0.7 – 12 million K). Using not just one slit, but an array of 37 slits simultaneously, MUSE’s spectrograph will be capable of obtaining spectra, spectrally pure imaging, and other important diagnostics of the plasma as well as of flaring and eruptive events in the solar atmosphere over a large field of view, at a rate that is ≈100 times faster than the already existing instruments. MUSE's context imaging will be of the highest resolution in space and time ever achieved (≈10 times better than the current instruments) to better enable the study of the dynamics and the nature of the solar transition region and corona. In this talk, I will present the MUSE mission and I will highlight the fascinating science it is designed to address, such as putting different competing theories and hypotheses to the test to answer several (almost 100-year-old) fundamental questions in solar astrophysics that remain unanswered to this day.

8. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece

COSPAR 2022 44th Scientific Assembly 16-24 July 2022, Athens. Alvio@80 Conference in honor of Alvio Renzini 5-10 September 2022, Kolymbari, Island of Crete.

9. 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 May 1, 2022.  Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before April 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.