1. Short News
2. The 2022 Nick Kylafis Lecture
3. EAS Membership
4. LOFAR2.0 Greece station – Expression of interest
5. Job Opportunities in Greece
6. ESA Archives Visitor Programme
7. 2′ science: A science communication project by young astronomers, supported by Hel.A.S.
8. Monthly Colloquium of Hel.A.S.
9. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece
10. About this Newsletter

We would like to congratulate Mr. Raphael Skalidis who has recently successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled “Estimating the magnetic field strength in the interstellar medium” at the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Crete, under the supervision of Prof. K. Tassis. Mr. Skalidis has been also offered a 3 year postdoctoral fellowship position at Caltech/JPL (USA) and he will be moving there in early November 2022. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits.

We would like to remind all our members that the deadline for the Hel.A.S. travel grants for meetings occurring during the first half of 2023 is December 15 2022. Priority will be given to junior members who have no access to other sources of funding for their participation in conferences or workshops that are deemed paramount for the completion of their PhD Thesis. The application form is available here.

The Institute of Astrophysics – FORTH is happy to announce that the 2022 Nick Kylafis Lecturer, Prof. Francoise Combes, will present her lecture entitled “When black holes impact galaxies“, on October 6, 2022 @14:00 (UTC +3:00). The lecture will be streamed via ZOOM and details are available in the lecture page.

The “Nick Kylafis Lectureship” was established in 2019 in order to honor Nick Kylafis, Professor Emeritus at the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Crete and past President of Hel.A.S., on the occasion of his 70th birthday, for his 35 years of scientific contributions and leadership towards the founding and continuous improvement of the astrophysics group at the University of Crete and FORTH. This lifelong commitment has been instrumental in the international recognition of the research activities of the Crete astrophysics group, which led to the creation of the Institute of Astrophysics at FORTH in 2018. Under the auspices of the Lectureship, one distinguished theoretical astrophysicist is invited annually at FORTH for a brief visit.

As it was mentioned in the previous newsletter the European Astronomical Society (EAS) is offering free membership to all junior and ordinary members of HelAS, as well as members of all EAS affiliated societies. As a result, with just the HelAS annual membership fee, one may also receive all EAS member benefits, presented here. As of today 211 Ordinary/Junior members of HelAS, listed here, have become members of EAS.

Once a year we have the possibility to update this list so new members of HelAS, as well as old members who did not take advantage of this opportunity can benefit from the EAS membership. EAS may use the members’ data for EAS-only matters, such as sending e-mails with various information, as well as the EAS newsletter, logging on the EAS website, etc. The EAS will never sell or otherwise make available the members’ data to commercial or non-commercial third parties. Members that leave the EAS can request that their data be erased from the EAS database.

The members of HelAS who have expressed their interest over the past couple of months to become EAS members are listed here. If you think there’s a mistake in this, please contact the President of HelAS immediately.

This is an ‘Expression of Interest’ call to build a scientific and technical community which will invest efforts in building and operating a next generation LOFAR2.0 station in Greece. With Bulgaria and Italy stations in the planning, and the development of LOFAR2.0 in the next couple of years (expanding the bandwidth and exploring the long baselines for higher resolution studies), the involvement of Greece in this distributed facility may be timely. LOFAR science addresses a number of areas from astrophysics to ionosphere studies and space weather. More info on this is available here.
There is an initiative to investigate which are the possible groups and individuals that would benefit from a LOFAR2.0 station in Greece, and would be interested to become involved in moving this project forward, and very importantly, sustaining it. People who are interested are encouraged to contact Dr. Eleni Vardoulaki at elenivard@gmail.com .

• One (1) promotion-opened position with academic subject “Observational Astrophysics” at the level of Senior Researcher (Researcher B) has opened at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications, and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens. Interested parties are invited to submit all the required supporting documents electronically through the information system “APELLA”, (code APP28894) at the web address https://apella.minedu.gov.gr. The deadline for submission of applications is October 7, 2022.

• To increase the scientific return from its space science missions, the European Space Agency (ESA) welcomes applications from scientists interested in pursuing research projects based on data publicly available in the ESA Space Science Archives (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.

  During their stay, visiting scientists will have access to archives and mission specialists for help with the retrieval, calibration, and analysis of archival data. In principle, all areas of space research covered by ESA science missions can be supported.

  Residence lasts typically between one and three months, also distributed over multiple visits. Research projects can be carried out at ESAC (Madrid, Spain) and at ESTEC (Noordwijk, Netherlands). To offset the expenses incurred by visitors, ESA covers travel costs from and to the home institution and provides support for lodging expenses and meals.

  Applications received before 1 November 2022 will be considered for visits in spring and summer 2023.

  For further details, including areas of research and contact information, please refer to:

  https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/visitor-programme

  or write to the programme coordinators at arvp@cosmos.esa.int

• The ESA Astronomy Archives User Group (AAUG) represents ESA’s astronomical community at large and acts as an advisory body to the ESA Astronomy Working Group on matters related to the Astronomy Archives at ESA. These archives can be accessed at: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc  and include data from JWST, Gaia, HST, XMM-Newton, Herschel, Planck, Lisa pathfinder, Cheops, ISO, Exosat and the all encompassing EsaSky. The AAUG welcomes your feedback on your experience with the archives, and would like to hear your recommendations for improving the archives, suggestions for new data to include, as well as feedback on the Archival Research Visitor Programme https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/esdc/visitor-programme

  Please provide any feedback you may have, to Natalie Webb (Natalie.Webb@irap.omp.eu)  or through the AAUG email address : aaug@sciops.esa.int. Your suggestions will help make the data you are interested in more accessible.  Thank you!

As the new academic year is about to start, we would like to inform you on the activities of the science outreach group 2’science that is supported by Hel.A.S. The goal of this initiative is to present scientific topics to the public via a series of short articles, podcasts and other activities. Questions from readers are also welcome!

The members of the 2’science group would appreciate it if you could advertise their activities to your colleagues, and if you wish to contribute, feel free to contact the team!

Visit the website: https://2science.gr/
Ask your question here: https://2science.gr/ask-the-experts/
Check the social media: https://www.facebook.com/2sciencegr , https://www.instagram.com/2sciencegr/

We are happy to announce that the October 2022 colloquium speaker is Dr. Nicolas Prantzos. As usual, videos of all past colloquia are available in the Youtube channel of the Society. Details of the upcoming colloquium follow:

19^th Monthly Colloquium of HelAS – 11 October 2022
“Recent developments in the chemical evolution of the Milky Way”
by
Dr. Nicolas Prantzos, Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France

Tuesday, 11 October 2022 at 15:00 Athens time (UTC + 3:00)

Click for ZOOM link
(Meeting ID: 823 4942 4155 and Passcode: 658694)

Abstract: In the past few years, the investigation of the past history of our Galaxy, as recorded in the chemical composition and the kinematics of its stars, was revolutionized from progress in both observations and theory. In the observational field, we entered a new, “industrial”, era since ESA’s Gaia satellite measured the positions and kinematics of millions of stars, while dedicated ground surveys (RAVE, APOGEE, GALAH, LAMOST) measured the abundances of dozens of chemical elements for hundreds of thousands of stars. In the field of theory, improved stellar modelling revealed the impact of new/updated ingredients (rotation, magnetic fields, mixing prescriptions etc) in the composition of the stellar ejecta. I will present a short overview of those developments and their impact on our understanding of the chemical evolution of our Galaxy.

• The Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics of the Academy of Athens (RCAAM), organizes on Friday, October 14th 2022, at the central building of the Academy of Athens (Panepistimiou 28), a one-day workshop on:

  “Spirals and bars in galaxies”

  The goal of the workshop is to bring together research experts working on the Dynamics and Morphology of disk galaxies to discuss current theories about the formation and evolution of the basic structures observed in this galactic type, namely the spirals and the bars. The scientific program consists of eight talks, which will be given by five invited speakers (E. Athanassoula, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM), Marseille, France; C. Efthymiopoulos, Department of Mathematics, University of Padova, Italy; P. Grosbol, European Southern Observatory (ESO), Munich, Germany; T. Naab, Max-Planck Institut fuer Astrophysik, (MPA), Munich, Germany; K. Saha, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India) and three RCAAM staff members (G. Contopoulos, P.A. Patsis, M. Harsoula). Discussions will follow all talks, as well as the end of the evening session.

  Interested scientists may attend the event either in person (depending on the restrictions that may apply due to the pandemic) or over zoom, by joining the list of persons receiving the announcements of the RCAAM seminars at the web page http://astro.academyofathens.gr/ (if they are not already subscribed). In either cases they should send an e-mail to the organizers for approval (see contact details below). There are no registration fees.

  Contact details:
  Panos Patsis
  Tel: +30-210-6597169
  E-Mail: patsis@academyofathens.gr
  Webpage: astro.academyofathens.gr
  

• 12th Panhellenic Conference of Amateur Astronomy

  14-16 October 2022, Patras

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