Astronomische Nachrichten
Astronomische Nachrichten, one of the first international journals in the field of astronomy, was founded in 1821 by the German astronomer Heinrich Christian Schumacher. It claims to be the oldest astronomical journal in the world, still being published; the publication today specializes in articles on solar physics, extragalactic astronomy, cosmology and instrumentation for these fields. All articles are subject to peer review; the journal was founded in 1821 by Heinrich Christian Schumacher, under the patronage of Christian VIII of Denmark, became the world's leading professional publication for the field of astronomy, succeeding where others had failed or not achieved the same renown. Schumacher edited the journal at the Altona Observatory under the administration of Denmark part of Prussia, today part of the German city of Hamburg. Schumacher edited the first 31 issues of the journal, from its founding in 1821 until his death in 1850; these early issues ran to hundreds of pages, consisted of letters sent by astronomers to Schumacher, reporting their observations.
The journal proved to be a great success, over the years Schumacher received thousands of letters from hundreds of contributors. The letters were published in the language in which they were submitted German, but English and other languages; the journal's renown was acknowledged by the British astronomer John Herschel in a letter to the Danish King in 1840, writing that Astronomische Nachrichten was: Other astronomical journals were founded around this time, such as the British Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, founded in 1827. It was the importance of Astronomische Nachrichten, that led the American astronomer Benjamin A. Gould in 1850 to found The Astronomical Journal in the United States. Following Schumacher's death, the interim director of the observatory and editor of the journal was Adolphus Cornelius Petersen, who had worked at the observatory with Schumacher for 24 years from around 1825. Petersen, who died in 1854, was aided as editor by the Danish astronomer Thomas Clausen, who had previously worked at the observatory.
The editor from 1854 was the German astronomer Christian August Friedrich Peters, who had taken over as director of the observatory at Altona. In 1872, the observatory moved from Altona to Kiel, from where Peters continued to publish the journal until his death in 1880, aided in his final years by his son Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Peters; the journal would continue to be published in Kiel until 1938. Following Peters's death, Adalbert Krueger served as the new director of the observatory and editor of the journal from 1881 until he died in 1896. At this time the journal was the organ of the Astronomische Gesellschaft; the editor from 1896 until his death in 1907 was the German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who had assisted Krueger. Kreutz edited volumes 140 to 175. Other staff members during the period from 1880 to 1907 included the astronomers Richard Schorr and Elis Strömgren; the editor from 1907 to 1938 was the German astronomer Hermann Kobold. After Kobold retired in 1938, the journal's editorial office moved from Kiel to Berlin, during the Second World War the journal was published by the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut in Berlin-Dahlem.
In 1945, the institute was relocated to Heidelberg. After the war, Astronomische Nachrichten was edited by Hans Kienle, director of the Astrophysical Observatory of Potsdam; the observatory was in Potsdam, on the outskirts of Berlin, from 1948 the journal was published by the publishing company Akademie-Verlag, under the auspices of the German Academy of Sciences Berlin. One of Kienle's students, Johann Wempe succeeded him as editor in 1951 and held the post for 22 years. From 1949, from the 1950s until the reunification of Germany in 1990, the journal was published in the German Democratic Republic, behind the Iron Curtain. From 1974 onwards, the journal issues list a chief editor and an editorial board, the journal was bilingual, with the same material published in German and English. Akademie-Verlag was taken over by VCH in 1990. From 1996 to the present day, the journal has been published by Wiley-VCH; this company was formed in 1996 when the German publishing company Verlag Chemie joined John Wiley and Sons.
The journal's editorial offices remain in Potsdam, at the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, the current editor is K. G. Strassmeier; the back catalogue of the journal includes 43,899 articles in 99,565 pages in 328 volumes, published over a period of over 180 years. Although the journal was founded in 1821, the first volume was dated 1823. Volume 1 consisted of a total of 516 pages; the next year, volume 2, saw 497 pages. Apart from the years 1830–1832, when two volumes were published in 1831 and none in 1830 or 1832, single volumes of around 20–30 issues were published each year until 1846, it was two volumes a year until 1884. There were a record number of five volumes published in 1884. Most years from 1884 to 1914 had three or more volumes; the years 1915–1919 saw a dip in publication, with 1916 and 1919 only featuring one volume. From 1920 to 1940, most years saw three volumes published. Only one volume per year was published from 1941 to 1943, the journal was not published at all from 1944 to 1946.
From 1947 to the present, the journal has published a volume per year in most years, but did not publish at all in some years i
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes are an ethnic group native to Greece, southern Albania, Turkey, Egypt and, to a lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. They form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world. Greek colonies and communities have been established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, but the Greek people have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where the Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age; until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, the Balkans and Constantinople. Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization; the cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens, Alexandria and Constantinople at various periods. Most ethnic Greeks live nowadays within the borders of Cyprus.
The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor. Other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to the Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church. Greeks have influenced and contributed to culture, exploration, philosophy, architecture, mathematics and technology, business and sports, both and contemporarily; the Greeks speak the Greek language, which forms its own unique branch within the Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic. They are part of a group of classical ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people"; the Proto-Greeks arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, at the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during the 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects, as they presented themselves centuries and are therefore subject to some uncertainties.
There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Aeolians, which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, the second, the Dorian invasion, around the 11th century BC, displacing the Arcadocypriot dialects, which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse. An alternative hypothesis has been put forth by linguist Vladimir Georgiev, who places Proto-Greek speakers in northwestern Greece by the Early Helladic period, i.e. towards the end of the European Neolithic. Linguists Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson in a 2003 paper using computational methods on Swadesh lists have arrived at a somewhat earlier estimate, around 5000 BC for Greco-Armenian split and the emergence of Greek as a separate linguistic lineage around 4000 BC. In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B, providing the first and oldest written evidence of Greek.
The Mycenaeans penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes, Crete and the shores of Asia Minor. Around 1200 BC, the Dorians, another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus. Traditionally, historians have believed that the Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization, but it is the main attack was made by seafaring raiders who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC; the Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages, but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth; the Homeric Epics were and accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the time of Euhemerism that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of the Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of antiquity.
The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when the idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was a matter of common culture; the works of Homer and Hesiod were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period; the classical period of Greek civilization covers a time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BC. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in eras; the Classical period is described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and
Antoniadi scale
The Antoniadi scale is a system used by amateur astronomers to categorise the weather conditions when viewing the stars at night. The Antoniadi scale was invented by Eugène Antoniadi, a Greek astronomer, who lived from 1870 to 1944. Living most of his life in France, he spent his time viewing Mars from Camille Flammarion's observatory, he was prestigious and was given access to the Meudon Observatory, the largest of the time. Now the scale is seen as the metric system of astronomy, being used as a default measurement all over the world; until in 2018, astronomers have been debating whether a new system with more categories is necessary. The scale is a five-point system, with 1 being the best seeing 5 being the worst; the actual definitions are, without a quiver. Slight quivering of the image with moments of calm lasting several seconds. Moderate seeing with larger air tremors that blur the image. Poor seeing, constant troublesome undulations of the image. Bad seeing, hardly stable enough to allow a rough sketch to be made.
Note that the scale is indicated by use of a Roman numeral or an ordinary number. Astronomers have devised several methods for defining the quality of seeing apart from the Antoniadi scale, including: Transparency Limiting magnitude a light meter https://www.webcitation.org/5knIUG6ml archived 2009-10-25 Antoniadi_scale.html
