Celebrating 11th of February in the High-Energy Astrophysics community: AstroSciku contest

XMM2Athena is joining the celebrations of the International Day of Girls and Women in Science with the aim of showing the contributions of women to science and in particular to the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

This year we present a joint international initiative of the Athena Community Office, the XMM2Athena project,  the X-IFU and WFI consortia and the AHEAD2020 project launching a call for AstroSciku.  An AstroSciku is an adaptation of the Japanese haiku poem form, seeking the same simplicity and capture of the moment, but focused on astronomy and, for this contest,  with a gender perspective. Although there are several variants of the Scikus we will follow the traditional 3 lines long, written in English with 5-7-5 syllabic structure and no-rhyming lines (look at The Sciku project website and Twitter for help and ideas!). Participants should draw inspiration from discoveries or research made by women astronomers and astrophysicists (from all times) to create their AstroSciku. Each AstroSciku must be original and contain, in addition to the 3 verses, a title related either to the scientist  to whom it refers to or to the context. Themes about high-energy astrophysics will be especially valued.

This contest is open to anyone who wants to participate. Up to two different AstroSciku may be submitted by posting them on the participant’s personal Twitter account. To be valid, the tweets must include #2022AstroSciku #WomenInScience in their posts before the 7th of February 2022.

Competition Rules:

• The submission of AstroSciku starts with this publication and ends on February 7th, 2022.
• Participants: everyone can submit their AstroSciku.
• How to participate: there are two options to participate. The preferred option is to post your AstroSciku on your personal Twitter including  #2022AstroSciku  #WomenInScience hashtags.  But if you don’t have a Twitter account, you can send us your AstroScikus to xmm2athena-contact@irap.omp.eu and we will take care of disseminating it on XMM2ATHENA Twitter. If this is the case, please include in the email a name or alias for its publication on Twitter.
• Limits: each participant can send a maximum of 2 AstroSciku.
• Selection: three AstroSciku will be selected considering originality, relevance to the topic and accessibility by the general public. The selection will be done by members of the different teams, will be final and cannot be reconsidered. The result will be published on 11^th  February through the project/consortia communication channels.. The project will have the right to use the submitted AstroSciku for its communication activities.
• Prize: the first AstroSciku in the list of  the three classified will receive a merchandising pack of the projects and public recognition of the author’s ingenuity with the publication of the winner on social networks and the websites of the different projects involved on the 11th of February activity.

Participation in this contest implies the acceptance of all these competition rules.