JUNE  2022 - TOPICS

Short News The 41st General Assembly and Elections of Hel.A.S. Summer School of Hel.A.S. Onassis Lectures 2022 in Gravitational Waves One new position at the RCAAM/Academy of Athens Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. Short News

We would like to congratulate Dr. Emanouella Paraskeva who recently completed her PhD at the Department of Physics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in collaboration with the National Observatory of Athens, under the supervision of Dr. Bonanos. The subject of her thesis was “Characterizing the properties of supernova progenitors and their circumstellar environments”. Emmy will be starting a Postdoctoral Scholar position at the University of California, Davis on June 1st. The Society extends its best wishes to Dr. Paraskeva for further successes in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Anezina Solomonidou, who recently returned back to Greece in a special scientist position on space sciences and space exploration at the Hellenic Space Center. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Sotiria Fotopoulou, who was recently awarded a Lecturer position at the University of Bristol (UK), where she already was as Vice-Chancellors' Fellow. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. All members are encouraged to review the minutes of the 18th meeting of the Governing Council of HelAS, which took place on May 9, 2022.

2. The 41st General Assembly and Elections to Hel.A.S.

The agenda of the 41st General Assembly of the Society, which will take place on Friday June 24, 2022, is available here. At noon Prof. Despina Hatzidimitriou will deliver an invited lecture to all participants entitled "The Gaia view of the Milky Way Galaxy and its satellites ". The same day from 8:00 until 17:00 we will have the first electronic elections of new Governing Council and Auditors of the Society. We would like to remind all members that in order to participate in the upcoming elections one must have paid the 2021 membership fee by June 10. After this date, the e-mails of the voters will be submitted to the electronic voting system for processing. According to article 33 of our Constitution, only members with no outstanding membership fees are eligible to vote.

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. Please note that the registration deadline for the summer school is June 15, 2022.

4. Onassis Lectures 2022 in Gravitational Waves

The Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH is sharing the news that the 2022 Onassis Lectures, organised annually since 2001 by the Onassis Public Benefit Foundation and FORTH will have "Gravitational Waves" as their science theme. The keynote Lecturer will be Barry Barish, the Linde Professor of Physics Emeritus at Caltech (USA) and 2017 Physics Nobel Prize winner. The lectures will take place, as usual, at the FORTH premises in Heraklion at the island of Crete, Greece on July 25–29, 2022. The Onassis Foundation will provide financial support to 35 Greek and 15 International qualified students (post Graduate and advanced Undergraduate) to cover their travel and accommodation subsistence in order to attend the lectures. The application deadline is June 10, 2022. More information is available here.

5. One new position at the RCAAM/Academy of Athens

The Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Athens invites applications for a position at the rank of Assistant Researcher on the topic of Dynamical Systems in Astronomy and in Quantum Mechanics. The deadline is the 27th of June 2022.

6. Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S.

We are happy to announce that the June 2022 colloquium speaker is Prof. Despina Hatzidimitriou who will give the colloquium on the day of the 41st General Assembly of the Society. As usual, videos of all past colloquia are available in the Youtube channel of the Society. Details of the upcoming colloquium follow: 18th Monthly Colloquium of HelAS - 24 June 2022 "The Gaia view of the Milky Way Galaxy and its satellites " by Prof. Despina Hatzidimitriou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens Friday, 24 June 2022 at 12:00 Athens time (UTC + 3:00) Click for ZOOM link (Meeting ID: 811 3369 3980and Passcode: 344344) Abstract:The ESA Gaia mission has revolutionized our perception of the Milky Way Galaxy and its surroundings. High precision proper motions and parallaxes for hundreds of millions of stars have revealed remarkable features and sub-structures related to the formation and evolution of our Galaxy. The dynamical state of the Magellanic Clouds has been well constrained for the first time with spectacular results on their interactions and orbital history. Orbits for tens of smaller satellites have been determined, including ultra faint dwarfs, some of them satellites of the Magellanic Cloud system. Gaia data also have a tremendous impact on our understanding of star clusters and associations, their formation and evolution, and their role as “building” blocks of the galaxy “field” populations. In this talk I will present an overview of breakthroughs achieved with the aid of Gaia data and will also discuss some highlights of the June 13th Gaia DR3 release.

7. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece

2022 Summer School for Astrostatistics in Crete 11-15 July University of Crete Herakleion 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.

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