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Astronomy from Athens Greece via the Internet
A Grecian Astronomer - A Heritage
GRAS Driver : Strikis Iakovos
Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association, Elizabeth Observatory of Athens.
The ancient Greeks were credited with major discoveries in astronomy. Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 B.C.) was first to propose that the earth spun on its axis and orbited around the sun. These ideas were not accepted for 1800 years when Copernicus further developed this theory.
Hipparches (200 B.C.) discovered the constants of the equinoxes and the length of a year.
Anaxagoras discovered that the moon reflected sunlight, not producing its own light and discovered the causes of eclipses.
Thales of Miletus, was able to predict when a solar eclipse would occur.
From present day Athens, the capital city of Greece, the atmospheric conditions are far to be ideal for observing the stars and it gets even worst as the years go by, it is worth mentioning here that in 1999 I was able to observe a 4.5 mag star at zenith but now I only see 3.8 mag stars. This might not seem a big difference but it really means many thousand of stars less.
I started to observe the night sky in the early 1998 and I got my first telescope one year later. It was only a 60mm refractor f/750mm that I used like it was made from gold. At this time there were only two amateur astronomy clubs in the whole country and it was really difficult to come in contact with them or other experienced amateur astronomers around Greece.
Both of those astronomy clubs were made and had as a main target the "stargazing" and the "pretty picture imaging". In 2000 I met Iakovos Stellas who is a dedicated planetary observer and one of the most experienced in analysis of visual planetary observations.With Mr. Stellas and another friend, Maravelias Grigoris, we started to observe Venus visually and made drawings of the planet for a few months. After that we sent all our drawings to the coordinator of Venus/Mercury section of the B.A.A. Mr Robert Steele. After that I started to talk with Mr. Steele about visual observing of the planets.
With the help of Mr. Stellas I started to observe visually the main planets of our solar system such as Jupiter, Mars, Venus and Saturn. In time I started to understand better the planetary observing techniques and the nature of the telescopes.
In 2003 I got my baby scope, it was a Celestron 6" f/1200mm Achromatic refractor that revealed me the beauty of Mars.
After that I came to the "Digital Age" by starting using a well known webcam the "ToUcam Pro II" to image Jupiter and Saturn. A whole new universe was revealed to me by that small camera. From 2004 and until now I have never stopped to image the universe always in a way not only to produce "pretty pictures" but to make observations useful in many different fields of Astronomy.
Variable Stars, our Sun and our small Planetary System are the fields that I mostly spend my time, but my main activity is to observe and study the Total Solar Eclipses, from 1999 until now I have observed five Total Solar Eclipses.
More about my Astronomy and my Photography please visit the following links:
Strikis is a skilled professional photographer and a GRAS Driver. Now with the freedom to escape the light pollution of Athens and able to explore the skies from his apartment in the city.
Thank you Strikis!
