SEPTEMBER 2007 - TOPICS

Short News Hel.A.S. members who obtained their PhDs The 8th Hellenic Astronomical Conference in Thassos The 25th General Assembly of Hel.A.S. Past issues of Hipparchos Newsletter Development of Space Astrophysics in Crete Europlanet in the 72nd Thessaloniki International Fair Report from the last ESA/SPC meeting Upcoming Astronomy meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. SHORT NEWS

A workshop on the "Latest Progress in Astrophysics" will take place in Athens on October 5-6, 2007. The workshop is under the aegis of the Hellenic national commission for UNESCO, sponsored by UNESCO-BRESCE and the University of Athens, and is coordinated by Prof. E. Rovithis-Livaniou. Please view the following second announcement for more information: http://www.helas.gr/events/SREAC.pdf A workshop on Neutron Monitors entitled "The present and the future of Neutron Monitors", will take place in Athens on September 27, 2007, during the last day of the Solar Extreme Events 2007 Symposium. Please view the workshop site for more information: http://cosray.phys.uoa.gr/SEE2007/workshop_on_neutron_monitors.htm

2. HEL.A.S. MEMBERS WHO OBTAINED THEIR PHDs

We congratulate the following five Junior members of Hel.A.S. who recently completed their graduate studies and obtained their PhDs: Dr. Emmanouil Angelakis, PhD from University of Bonn, Germany, under the supervision of Prof. U. Klein. The title of his dissertation was "Multi-Frequency Study of the NVSS Foreground Sources in the Cosmic Background Imager Fields". Dr. Angelakis is currently a post-doc in the Very Long Baseline Interferometery group of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn (Germany). Dr. Antonis Antoniou, PhD from the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Athens under the supervision of Prof. M. Danezis. The title of his dissertation was "Hyperionization phenomena in the coronal and post-coronal regions of Oe type stars". Dr. Dimitrios Emmanoulopoulos, PhD from the University of Heidelberg (Germany) under the supervision of Prof. S. Wagner. The title of his dissertation was "Nonlinear Time Series Analysis of BL Lac Light Curves". Dr. Maria Gerontidou, PhD from the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Athens under the supervision of Prof. H. Mavromichalaki. The title of her dissertation was "Sources and acceleration mechanisms of the solar proton events". Dr. Christina Plainaki, PhD from the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Athens under the supervision of Prof. H. Mavromichalaki. The title of her dissertation was "Physics of the solar cosmic rays using data from Neutron Monitor Network and Satellites".

3. THE 8th HELLENIC ASTRONOMICAL CONFERENCE IN THASSOS

The final program and all administrative details for the 8th Hellenic Astronomical Conference are now available at: http://www.ee.duth.gr/hac/ If you have not yet completed the Conference Registration Form please retrieve it from the Conference web site and e-mail it to appropriate address, as soon as possible, and certainly before Friday 7 September 2007. Furthermore, participants who may have decided that, due to the recently announced Greek National Elections on September 16th 2007, they will not be able to attend the conference are requested to contact the LOC as well as the Chair of the their corresponding Session immediately. The Conference is expected to be very interesting, with more than 100 submitted abstracts, a number of invited talks by distinguished speakers, as well as two general public talks for the occasion of the 50th anniversary from the launch of Sputnik. We are looking forward to seeing you all in Thassos in 2 weeks!

4. THE 25th GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF HEL.A.S.

The upcoming 25th General Assembly (GA) of Hel.A.S. will take place on Friday September 14 2007 at 4:00pm in Thassos, during the 8th Conference of Hel.A.S. All members of the Society are strongly encouraged to attend. If you have any topics that you would like to be included in the agenda of the GA please send them by e-mail to the Secretary of the society at secretary@helas.gr. The current agenda is available at: http://www.helas.gr/events/thassos_agenda.pdf All members are requested to review this file as this will facilitate the running of the GA.

5. PAST ISSUES OF HIPPARCHOS NEWSLETTER

We would like to draw to the attention of all our members that the last issue of Hipparchos (Vol. 2, Issue 2) must have been delivered to their postal address by the end of April 2007. If some of you have not received it by now, it is very likely that your address listed in the directory of Hel.A.S. is incorrect. Please check your postal address in the online directory at: http://www.helas.gr/members.php and if this the case, please inform the Secretary of Hel.A.S. (secretary@helas.gr) as well as the editor of Hipparchos Prof. K. Kokkotas (kokkotas@auth.gr). Extra copies of the past three issues of Hipparchos will be available in Thassos for the members of Hel.A.S. who, for some reason, did not receive them. Furthermore, a special issue of Hipparchos with a number of articles on the astronomical facilities of Greece will be distributed to all our members in the Thassos Conference, together with the latest issue of the "Ouranos" magazine of the Society of Space and Astronomy of Volos. As usual all past issues of Hipparchos are available as PDF files at: http://www.helas.gr/news.php

6. DEVELOPMENT OF SPACE ASTROPHYSICS IN CRETE

The Astrophysics Group at the University of Crete and the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas recently proposed to the European Union, under the 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7), the "Development of Space Astrophysics in Crete". The proposal was selected for funding and a grant of about 1.2 million Euro is under negotiations. A number of postdoctoral positions in Infrared and X-ray Astrophysics, as well as in astrophysical signal processing, will become available over the next year. In addition, funding for PhD students for research in the above mentioned fields will be available over the next four years. For more information please contact Prof. Nikos Kylafis (kylafis@physics.uoc.gr)

7. EUROPLANET IN THE 72nd THESSALONIKI INTERNATIONAL FAIR

The 72nd International Fair in Thessaloniki in collaboration with the European Network EUROPLANET is celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the launch of Sputnik and the 10 year anniversary of the launch of Cassini-Huygens. Dr. Eleni Chatzichristou is leading the organization of a special exposition which will take place in Pavilion #9 of HELEXPO. A number of activities including a competition with awards addressed to children, amateur astronomers, and artists will take place during the whole duration of the International Fair, between 8 and 16 of September. For more information (in greek) visit: http://www.helexpo.gr/tif2007/p2.htm

8. REPORT FROM THE LAST ESA/SPC MEETING

The last Scientific Program Committee (SPC) of the European Space Agency (ESA) took place in Paris, France, on May 24-25, 2007. Greece was represented to this meeting by Dr. Vassilios Tritakis of the Academy of Athens. The report of Dr. Tritakis is available online at: http://www.helas.gr/esa/ESA_SPC_118_24May07.pdf During the SPC meeting, it was mentioned that ESA will formally issue a call for proposals for instruments for the upcoming Solar Orbiter mission in early fall 2007. Members of the greek solar physics community who are interested to participate in this possibility should start preparing accordingly.

9. UPCOMING ASTRONOMY MEETINGS IN GREECE

The following meetings will take place in Greece. Please check the corresponding web page or contact the organizers by e-mail for more information.

8th Hellenic Astronomical Conference Thasos Island, 13 - 15 September 2007 Chaos in Astronomy Athens, 17 - 20 September 2007 Solar Extreme Events 2007 International Symposium: Fundamental Science and Applied Aspects Athens, 24 - 27 September 2007 Workshop on "Latest Progress in Astrophysics" Athens, 5-6 October 2007 5th Conference of Greek Amateur Astronomers Patras, 5-7 October 2007 Communicating Astronomy with the Public 2007 (CAP 2007) Athens, 8-11 October 2007 The Cosmic Odyssey of the Elements Aegina island, 23-27 June 2008

10. 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 October 1st 2007. Please send your announcements (e.g. appointments/departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before September 25, 2007. 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.