Hello stargazers!

It's been a while since our last outdoor meeting. Nope, I'm not about to suggest another stargazing session in the woods with wild boars and -10C degrees :) This time, to keep this group together, we organized an indoor workshop on the basics of Astronomy and Astrophotography, to give some theory background to put into practice the next time we'll go out!

Some of the topics covered will be roughly:

• brief intro to apparent motion of objects in the sky and brief intro to Astronomy

• types of telescopes and mounts used by amateur astronomers

• definition of seeing conditions and night sky quality and how to practically determine them

• very brief history of astrophotography

• all types of astrophotography from the easiest level to the hardest targets

• types of popular targets: moon, planets, deep sky objects (clusters, nebulae, galaxies etc.) and how to photograph them

• a 15-20 questions quiz to see if you paid attention :P

The talk will include a generous amount of high quality pictures and a few short animations.

WHO

The presenter is Ioannis, an active member of this group.

Ioannis was born in Athens, Greece. He was happy to acquire his first telescope at 13, with which he spent countless nights observing, under the light-polluted sky of Athens :) At 17 he won the first prize in the national competition of Astronomy and Space Science, among 350 contestants from all over Greece. Part of the prize was to visit a NASA space centre in U.S. the following Summer to receive a taste of astronaut training. He then pursued studies in Physics at Athens University and continued to a PhD degree in Astrophysics and Gravitational Waves from black holes, at Cardiff University. In the period Oct. 2012 to Oct. 2014 he worked at the Max-Planck Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam-Golm. He is in love with Berlin and its people, so he decided to stick around, currently working as a software developer in the field of automation technology.

Yep, I want to hear what this guy has to say :)

WHEN

Thursday 22nd Jan, 19.30. Let's account for a 1 hour and a half in total (welcome, workshop, Q&A). Optional beers in a bar next to the venue afterwards, maybe?

WHERE

The co-working space co-up has been super generous to us and will provide a room with projector for us to use. The entrance door is a bit hidden and if you get lost simply call me at [masked], but I'll make sure to put direction signs. Anyway, it is a 3 minutes walk away from Kottbusser Tor U1 station, the precise address is Adalbertstraße 8, 10999, Berlin.