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In the latest meeting of the Spanish Astronomical Society (5-9 September, Tenerife, Spain) it was announced that our work with Emmanuel (Manos) Kardasis on Venus’ Cloud Discontinuity (published at the beginning of 2022, in the journal Atmosphere) was the winner for the 2nd iteration of the Javier Gorosabel Award on pro-am collaborations.

I am actually excited about this. But not because I am part of the award… I am excited because this award recognizes the effort put by some amateurs in order to produce not only scientifically useful images/data but document their effort, share it with both the amateur and professional communities and contribute to the advance of our knowledge by analyzing and publishing their results. I am honored that I could help Manos to achieve that. I strongly believe that it is a worthy recognition of his more than two decades of contribution in Astronomy and the community in general.

Of course, kudos to Javier – without his expertise and guidance this work wouldn’t have materialized.

The following paper is the result of a tedious task that my good friend Manos Kardasis undertook over the last two+ years. He noticed the presence of this (relatively newly discovered) feature in Venus and collected images from amateur observers worldwide to study in detail the discontinuity and constrain some of its properties by comparison with data from JAXA’s Akatsuki.

The importance of this work is twofold: a. it shows the high potential of observations with small telescopes to perform scientific studies of quality, and b. it promotes and encourage encourage amateur observers to perform and increase the observations of Venus.

I am really happy with this paper as it is a very well-deserved outcome of the work and effort that Manos put into this (fighting and joggling with many other things at the same time) and it showcases how a professional-amateur collaboration can succeed. Well done Manos!

Amateur Observers Witness the Return of Venus’ Cloud Discontinuity

Kardasis E., Peralta J., Maravelias G., Imai M., Wesley A., Olivetti T., Naryzhniy Y., Morrone L., Gallardo A., Calapai G., Camarena J., Casquinha P., Kananovich D., MacNeill N., Viladrich C., Takoudi A.

Firstly identified in images from JAXA’s orbiter Akatsuki, the cloud discontinuity of Venus is a planetary-scale phenomenon known to be recurrent since, at least, the 1980s. Interpreted as a new type of Kelvin wave, this disruption is associated to dramatic changes in the clouds’ opacity and distribution of aerosols, and it may constitute a critical piece for our understanding of the thermal balance and atmospheric circulation of Venus. Here, we report its reappearance on the dayside middle clouds four years after its last detection with Akatsuki/IR1, and for the first time, we characterize its main properties using exclusively near-infrared images from amateur observations. In agreement with previous reports, the discontinuity exhibited temporal variations in its zonal speed, orientation, length, and its effect over the clouds’ albedo during the 2019/2020 eastern elongation. Finally, a comparison with simultaneous observations by Akatsuki UVI and LIR confirmed that the discontinuity is not visible on the upper clouds’ albedo or thermal emission, while zonal speeds are slower than winds at the clouds’ top and faster than at the middle clouds, evidencing that this Kelvin wave might be transporting momentum up to upper clouds.

arXiv: 2202.12601
Journal: Atmosphere 2022, 13(2), 348

A short paper has been presented as a poster in the EPSC-DPS Joint Meeting 2019, held 15-20 September 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland. The data originate from a series of outreach activities performed by the Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association, entitled “Introduction to Observational Astronomy“, which aimed to introduce interested individuals to the aspects of the observational techniques for scientifically useful observations, i.e. how amateur observations can help professionals and contribute to Astronomy in general (pro-am networking).

Evaluating introductory seminars on observational astronomy, using the Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit

Moutsouroufi, Konstantina; Maravelias, Grigoris; Marios Strikis, Iakovos; Kardasis, Emmanuel; Voutyras, Orfefs; Kountouris, Giorgos; Evangelopoulos, Athanasios; Aggelis, Konstantinos; Papadeas, Pierros; Schmidt, Tamara; Christou, Apostolos

During December 2018 – February 2019, the Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association coordinated a series of seminars entitled “Introduction to Observational Astronomy”. The goal of this series was to introduce interested individuals to the aspects of the observational techniques for scientifically useful observations. Using the Europlanet Evaluation Toolkit we implemented a number of evaluation methods to receive feedback. The results show the participation of a mainly young audience ( 60% between 18-39), where females are represented more than equally ( 52%). Using the “pebbles in a jar” method a 94% of satisfied attendees was measured, while by using post-event surveys (questionnaires) the lectures were perceived as “(very) explicit” and “(very) interesting” (94%), fulfilling the attendees’ expectations (92%). It is important to note that 88% considers that their interest in Astronomy increased and is willing to get involved in observations.

NASA/ADS bibcode: 2019EPSC…13.1749M , poster: EPSC2019-poster