The discussion about the contribution of Plato to natural sciences in general and astronomy in particular have been lively and passionate in the last centuries. In the platonic work, besides the platonic exhortation to “ignore the visible heavens”, metaphysical beliefs and political considerations are strongly intermingled with scientific reflections, physics and mathematics of his time; nevertheless, the platonic ideas have marked our civilization. It is worth studying and analyzing these doctrines in order to better understand not only the evolution of scientific thinking over the centuries, but the character, features and essence of natural sciences, and in particular astronomy, as well.

The so called “Ninnion tablet” [National Museum of Athens 11036] is a votive red-figured attic clay plaque, found in the Sanctuary of Eleusis in 1895, and dated to ca. 370 BC. It is a private offering, not of the utmost artistic quality, with an original and so far unique subject of mortals encountering the Eleusinian deities. The complex iconography has been extensively discussed in classical scholarship. The main scene is crowned by a frieze depicting a series of lunar discs and crescents, in a variety of positions, which however has not been given much attention yet. In the present paper we will examine whether these moons might have an astronomical significance.

Demetrios Eginitis (1862-1934), one of the most eminent modern Greek astronomers, directed the National Observatory of Athens for 44 years (1890-1933). He was its fourth director since its founding, the one who modernized the Observatory, which was in a state of inactivity after the death of Julius Schmidt in 1884. Eginitis ordered the purchase of adequate instruments, educated the personnel, enriched the library with necessary and up-to-date books and arranged for new buildings to be built in order to install the new telescopes and accommodate the personnel. Moreover, he divided the National Observatory of Athens into three separate Departments: the Astronomical, the Meteorological and the Geodynamic, establishing several meteorological and rain-gauging stations throughout Greece. Major innovations were also introduced by Demetrios Eginitis in the Greek society, beyond the strictly astronomical work. He contributed to the adoption of the Eastern European time zone for the civil time in Greece and he succeeded in changing the official calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian. Having served twice as Minister of Education, he created many schools, founded the Academy of Athens and the Experimental School of the University of Athens. Eginitis was fluent in French, German and English, and therefore was the official representative of his country in numerous international conferences and councils.

On the top of Mountain Oche and in other places of southern Euboea, 23 megalithic buildings are preserved in relatively good condition. They are known as “Drakospita” (= Dragon houses); their builders and purpose are unknown. We postulate that they, and especially the best-preserved one (that of Oche), were buildings dedicated to the worship of Teleia Hera (the “Perfect Hera”), the protector of marriage. According to the local tradition, these structures were built by dragons and here resided the king of the Cyclops. We believe that the true constructors were the Dryopes, an ancient prehellenic tribe worshipping Hera, a goddess associated in a certain mythological tradition with the celestial phenomena. In March 2002 and July 2004 we visited the Drakospito of Oche, measured its dimensions and calculated its orientation based directly on the Sun’s azimuth at sunset. A Sirius-rise orientation corresponding to circa 1100 B.C., not at odds with a previous archaeological dating based on artefacts found inside the structure, indicates a religious / celestial purpose for the building, in contrast with previous theories that it was merely a lodging built for shepherds, quarry workers or stone-cutters. In fact, it could be argued that at least the Drakospito of Oche was not mainly a place of Hera’s worship, but also an ancient megalithic prehellenic observatory of the celestial phenomena.

Astronomical Orientation of Ancient Greek temples to solar/moon/star rissing/setting targets is an old subject (Penrose 1892. Nissen 1906-1910. Dinsmoor 1939), that still preoccupies many recent studies on Archaeoastronomy (Papathanasiou and Hoskin 1994. Papathanassiou & Papadopoulou 1997; Aveni and Romano 2000; Liritzis & Vasiliou 2002, 2003, 2006; Vassiliou, 2007). A main factor to the determination of the orientation of those temples is the date of the festivals celebrated in situ in honor of their divine owners. In reality, apart from the festivals with a fixed date, epigraphic evidence implies existence of local homonymous festivals with various and maybe movable dates, including seasonal rites associated to the agricultural year and celebrated in honor of Demeter, the chief deity of agriculture (Kravaritou 2006, 2007). Our problematic is oriented towards the eventual impact of this fact to the orientation of Demeters’ temples. Here we provide new evidence based on measurements of 15 monuments attributed to Demeter at Eleusis, Athens, Thebes, Delphes, Eretria, Corinth, Delos, Tenos, Thassos, Mytilene, Kos, Rhodes, Knossos, Andros, and Sicily, that date to various historical periods and provide literary evidence attesting local celebrations. Those measurements are cross-examined in relation to bright stars –including whole constellations- whose rising/setting determined according to ancient texts the main agricultural works. Azimuth Values, angular altitude of skyline, and geographical coordinates were measured by magnetic compass, a clinometer, a theodolite and a GPS, and comparison was made with measurements obtained by other scholars. In the interpretation, use was made of the SkyMap Pro10. The question of the orientation of Greek temples is actually revisited, on the basis of investigating the impact and the eventual interference of both local festivities and panhellenic customs (cf. annual agricultural works) to the astronomical orientation of the temples of one single divinity, the Demeter. Bibliography A. F. Aveni & G. Romano, « Temple Orientation in Magna Grecia and Sicily », Journal for the History of Astronomy 31, 2000, 52-57. W. B. Dinsmoor, “Archaeology and Astronomy”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 80, 1939, 95-173. S. Kravaritou, La configuration des calendriers des cités grecques. Temps du rituel et temps du récit, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Paris/Lausanne 2006. S. Kravaritou, (2007) “Greek ‘Calendars’ and symbolic representation of the cosmic order: seasonal rites for Demeter”, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, Special Issue, Vol.6, No 3 (in press). I. Liritzis & H. Vasiliou, “Astronomical Orientations of Ancient Temples at Rhodes and Attica with a Tentative of Interpretation”, Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 2(1), 2002, 69-79. I. Liritzis & H. Vasiliou, « Archaeoastronomical Orientation of Seven Significant Ancient Hellenic Temples », Archaeoastronomy 17, 2002-2203, 94-100. I. Liritzis & H. Vasiliou, « Were Greek temples oriented towards aurorae ? », Astronomy & Geophysics 47, 2006, 14-18. H. Niessen, Orientation. Studien zur Geschichte der Religion, Berlin 1906-1910. M. Papathanassiou & M. Hoskin, “Orientation of the Greek Temples on Corfu”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 25, 1994, 111-114. M. Papathanassiou & Z. Papadopoulou, “Orientation of the Greek temples on Delos”, Proceedings of the 6th European and 3rd Hellenic Astronomical Conference, held in Thessaloniki, Greece, 2-5 July 1997 . F. C. Penrose, “A preliminary statement of an investigation of the dates of some of the Greek temples as derived from their orientation”, Nature 45, 1892, 395-397. Vassiliou, H 2007, PhD thesis, Dept of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, Rhodes.

At the heart of the teaching crisis lies the problem of unmotivated students. Contemporary Quality Education encourages for future-oriented thinking and equips all people, women and men, to be fully participating members of their own communities and also citizens of the world. This leads any individual learner towards achieving his/her fullest potential and enables a graduate student to succeed in an environment that many educational specialists around the world call a “rapidly changing environment.” In an educational model that views students as individuals at the beginning of a life–long intellectual adventure within a constantly changing society, students become the primary actors in the educational process rather than the dutiful audience of the teachers. In this paper we will discuss how Astronomy Education can influence and prepare the 21st century students for their life.

The EU-HOU project ("Hands-On Universe, Europe. Bringing frontline interactive astronomy to the classroom") is in keeping with the general goal of renewing the teaching of science. A re-awakening of interest for science in the young generation is foreseen through astronomy and the use of new technologies, which should challenge middle and high schools pupils. Bringing interactive frontline astronomy to the classroom» aims at engaging young minds in science through creative thinking and planning of activities in astronomy. It is a collaboration of 8 European partner countries promoting science as an exciting learning activity for all abilities. Tools and software for astronomical observations and image handling, together with stimulating interactive cross-curricular multi-media exercises and resources are freely available on the web in English and the national languages. Emphasis is given: a) on real observations, possibly acquired by the pupils themselves in classrooms thanks to either a European and worldwide network of automatic telescopes operated via Internet or didactical tools (Webcam system, radio telescope) developed within this project. These observations can be manipulated in classrooms with a specific software designed to be pupils friendly. They are integrated into pedagogical resources constructed in a close collaborative work between researchers and teachers. b) on class-ready resources and projects, easy to be used, that has been developed by the partners, inspired from research activities. The EU-HOU project is funded at 44% through the European program MINERVA (SOCRATES) for a two-year period. More information on the project, the partner Institutions, the Pilot Schools that are collaborating with the project across Europe and the results of the experience can be found in the network URL: www.euhou.net. In this talk we will describe the results of the first two years of hard and very successful collaboration. Special emphasis will be given on material developed in Greece and the Greek network.

Astronomy is a scientific field that, through both the allure of the sky and popular culture, enjoys significant penetration into the public and especially the young. This fact along with the interdisciplinary character of the field, makes astronomy an ideal avenue for teaching basic scientific principles in a context that is both relevant to the subject and interesting to the learners. Yet, there lies a significant challenge: the dissemination of sometimes highly specialized scientific knowledge to an audience without extended or even uniform scientific background, of a wide age range and scattered over a region considerably larger than a university campus. This paper presents the educational activities at the Thrace Amateur Astronomy Club (TAAC, http://www.astrothraki.gr/) that aim to disseminate the basics of astronomy and related physics to the public and especially the young. The dedicated amateur astronomers of the club, with the significant amount of astronomical knowledge that they amass through the pursuit of their passion, represent an alternative venue for astronomy’s outreach to the general public. Apart from conventional practices, TAAC is currently in the process of employing emerging technologies of Web 2.0 (wikis, interactive virtual online environments, etc.) and contemporary learner-centered educational approaches (such as problem based learning) in order to create self-directed experiential educational episodes in the field, in the classroom and on the internet.

Astronomia.gr is the first attempt for the constitution of a Greek, online and free encyclopedia focusing exclusively on astronomy and space science. The cornerstones of this effort, and, at the same time the distinguishing factors from other sources of information existing in the Greek language web is the astronomical orientation that gives the advantage of a solid and margined field, and the Wiki philosophy as this has been established by wikipedia, namely the user-contributed development of the content. Astronomia.gr was founded by members of the Astronomical Society of Patras, Orion, and was released to the public in August 2006. Today, astronomia.gr numbers more than eight hundred articles about astronomy in terms of science and amateur occupation, as well as articles about astrophysics, cosmology and space science. We present explicitly the function of this work, the results so far and the tasks for further development of the project.

The purpose of this poster is to present the astronomical activities which were held by High School students in Karditsa and the relation of students’ interest in Astronomy. Since 2004, students have participated in several projects in Astronomy, as the observation of Venus Transit on June 8th, 2004, the observation of Sun eclipse on March 23rd, 2006 and the observation of Lunar eclipse on March 3rd to 4th, 2007. Students also participated in “Hands on Universe” project, studying stars spectrums using computers. Under the same project they also studied the use of Doppler Effect, in order to understand the method to discover planets out of our Solar System. The students’ interest seems to increase as they join the activities. They prefer to choose Astronomy in school and join more and more non formal astronomical activities out of the typical school class.

The Antikythera Mechanism was found by chance, in a shipwreck, close to the small island of Antikythera (between Crete and Peloponnese) in April 1900, by sponge divers, who were stranded there, due to bad weather. The shipwreck was dated from between 86 and 67 B.C. (coins from Pergamon). The Mechanism was probably built in Rhodes and has been dated, by epigraphologists, around the second half of the 2nd century B.C. (100 – 150 B.C.). About this time the great Greek astronomer Hipparchos lived in Rhodes. He died there in 120 B.C. It was a portable (laptop-size), geared artefact which calculated and displayed, with high precision, the movement of the Sun and the Moon on the sky, the phase of the Moon for a given epoch and could predict eclipses. It had one dial on the front and two on the back. Its gears were driven by a manifold, with which the user could set a pointer to any particular epoch (at the front dial). While doing so, several pointers were synchronously driven by the gears, to show the above mentioned celestial phenomena on three accurately marked annuli. It contained an extensive user manual. The exact function of the gears has finally been decoded and a large portion of the manual has been read after 2000 years by a major new investigation, using state of the art equipment.

To last longer in the bed