On the previous weekend (October 13-14, 2018) the 11th Free and Open Source Software Communities Meeting was held in Heraklion of Crete (Greece). This is the Greek conference of the communities that develop free and open source software (such as Mozilla, Fegora, etc.). Although the meeting focuses on programmers and students it is open to […]
Astronomy Archive
A FOSSCOMM talk on Openess in Astronomy
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyNotes on the density of the disk/rings around B[e] supergiants
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyIn Zickgraf et al. 1989 (A&A, 220, 206) there is a comment on the density of the disk around the supergiant LHA 115-S 18. In Table 1 they provide (following Waters 1986) the mean particle density at r=R* for a number of sources: 3.2 x 1012, 2.6 x 1012, 4.6 x 1012, 1.7 x 1012 […]
Kick-off meeting at a new position!
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyToday it was my first day at the new job! It will be based at the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing (IAASARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (Greece). I will be working with Alceste Bonanos, along with Ming Yang and Frank Tramper, in a project related to the “Episodic Mass […]
XXXth General Assembly of IAU – week 1
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyThe XXXth General Assembly of the IAU is held in Vienna, Austria, from Aug 20 to 31, 2018. The first week is finished now and tomorrow the second starts. It is the biggest convention I have been so far with almost 3000 attendees, from all around the world literally. If I was to use only […]
Merging catalogs and creating unique identifier in bash
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyFor a certain project I had created a number of photometric catalogs, each one corresponding to a specific observing field. I would like to construct the final (merged) one but for this I needed to add a unique source identifier at the beginning of each row. I decided to create a F#-**** tag for each […]
An amazing drawing of Saturn
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyIn the era of imaging even from our cell phones making a drawing of a planet seems redundant. However, this is certainly a different perspective of a direct experience at the eyepiece of a telescope. And the final result can be fascinating, such as this drawing from Paul G. Abel, using the Clark telescope (a […]
Building an observatory in Syria
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyAt the last issue of CAP journal (No. 23, Feb 2018) we find the article “The World at a Glance: Highlights from IAU National Outreach Contacts” that provides short news from the IAU National Outreach Contacts. And for Syria we read: “Mohamad AlAssiry: Despite the political situation, the Syrian Astronomical Association was building an observatory […]
New paper on the circumstellar environment of galactic B[e] supergiants
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyFinally, after some years of work, it has been accepted for publication in MNRAS. Resolving the kinematics of the disks around Galactic B[e] supergiants Grigoris Maravelias, Michaela Kraus, Lydia S. Cidale, Marcelo Borges Fernandes, Maria L. Arias, Michel Curé, Georgios Vasilopoulos B[e] Supergiants are luminous evolved massive stars. The mass-loss during this phase creates a […]
Catching a supernova just before it happens
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyVictor Buso is a really very lucky man! On September 20, 2016 we wanted to test his new camera mounted on a 40-cm Newtonian telescope. He pointed to the spiral galaxy NGC 613 because it was at that time located near the zenith. He took a series of 20s exposures spanning approximately an hour and […]
Skinakas return!
By grigoris | Filed in AstronomyYesterday was the first night that I found myself at Skinakas Observatory. Even though some years have passed, there are really minor changes. The mountain welcomed us with great weather (scarce clouds, humidity close to 50%, and almost no wind at all!), while the seeing proved to be really good (~1″).
