Kanaris Tsinganos
Greek theoretical astrophysicist
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Kanaris C. Tsinganos (Greek: Κανάρης Κ. Τσίγκανος; born July 29, 1951)[citation needed] is a Greek theoretical astrophysicist and Professor Emeritus of Astrophysics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He works in plasma astrophysics, particularly magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flows, solar and stellar winds, and cosmic jets.[1]
He received his PhD from the University of Chicago under Eugene N. Parker, and served as director of the National Observatory of Athens (2011–2016) and president of the Hellenic Astronomical Society (2006–2010).[2]
Early life and career
Tsinganos was born in Filiatra, Messenia, Greece, and earned a BA in physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1974.[3] He moved to the University of Chicago for graduate study, earning an MS (1976) and a PhD (1980) in Physics; his dissertation on MHD equilibrium was supervised by Eugene Parker.[4]
He held research and teaching posts at Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute and at Harvard University (1980–1984), then joined the newly founded Department of Physics at the University of Crete in 1984, rising to full professor in 1997 while also affiliated with the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (1989–2001).[1] In 2001 he was appointed Professor of Astrophysics at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, becoming Professor Emeritus in 2018.[1] He has held visiting positions at the University of Turin, University of St Andrews, the Paris Observatory and Université Paris VII, the University of Porto, and KU Leuven.[3]
Research
Tsinganos works on theoretical and computational magnetohydrodynamics in solar, stellar, galactic, and extragalactic settings. A central theme has been using the observed self-similarity of cosmic outflows to derive quasi-analytical solutions to the coupled nonlinear MHD equations, identifying three classes of self-similar MHD outflow solutions — meridional, radial, and planar — that include as special cases the Parker (1958) model of the solar wind[5] and the Blandford–Payne (1982) disk-wind model.[6] From the 1990s, with collaborators he developed a series of "nonradial and nonpolytropic astrophysical outflows" MHD models applied to solar and stellar winds and to jets from young stellar objects and active galactic nuclei.[7]
Other interests include twisted magnetic fields in the Sun, the lower solar atmosphere near coronal holes, and linking small-scale solar wind properties to coronal source regions using joint Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter observations.[2][8] He served as Greek principal investigator for the Coronagraph Electronics and Control board of the ASPIICS coronagraph aboard ESA's Proba-3 mission, launched December 2024, and is a co-author on its first science papers.[9]
National Observatory of Athens
As Director of the National Observatory of Athens, Tsinganos oversaw ESA-funded projects including the Hubble Catalogue of Variables and Greece's contribution to ASPIICS, and initiated NELIOTA, a lunar-monitoring programme using the 1.2-metre Kryoneri telescope.[2] He was a founding member, secretary (2002–2006), and president (2006–2010) of the Hellenic Astronomical Society, and served on ESA's Science Programme Committee (2005–2010) and Greece's National Advisory Council for Research and Technology (2005–2010).[1] He was Greece's national outreach coordinator for the International Astronomical Union's 2019 centenary.[1]
Selected publications
- A Century of Cosmic Discoveries: Heliophysics and Space Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology published by Springer Nature Switzerland.[4]
- Parker, E. N.; Tsinganos, K. (1979). "Bernoulli forces on an elliptical cylinder by a nonuniform flow". Physics of Fluids, 22(10), pp. 1847–1851.
- Ferrari, A.; Trussoni, E.; Rosner, R.; Tsinganos, K. (1985). "On wind-type flows in astrophysical jets. I". The Astrophysical Journal, 294, pp. 397–418.
- Vlahakis, N.; Tsinganos, K. (1998). "Systematic construction of exact MHD models of astrophysical winds and jets". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 298(3), pp. 777–789.
- Xilouris, E. M.; Bonanos, A. Z.; et al. including Tsinganos, K. (2018). "NELIOTA: The wide-field, high-cadence lunar monitoring system at the prime focus of the Kryoneri telescope". Astronomy & Astrophysics, 619, A141.[10]
- Zhukov, A. N.; et al. including Tsinganos, K. (2026). "Ubiquitous small-scale dynamics in the slow solar wind formation region observed by Proba-3/ASPIICS". The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 999(2), L41.