ATHENA Community Office

The Athena Community Office (ACO) has been supporting the ESA’s Athena Science Study Team and the broad Athena scientific community since June 2016.  Currently, the Athena community is formed by more than 1000 researchers spread around the world. The ACO is led by the Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC). Further ACO contributors are IRAP, MPE and the University of Geneva.

The responsibilities assigned to the ACO are divided into four main categories:

• Optimising the community efforts in several area, for instance, supporting the production of documents including the White Papers of the scientific synergies of Athena with other observational facilities.

• Supporting and promoting the Athena science: it edits the periodical Athena Nuggets; keeps track of conferences of interest for Athena; keeps a record of publications related to the mission highlighting some of them; assists members of the community and other astronomers in performing science simulations (also developing supporting software); coordinates the Athena Science Advances Webinars, showcasing exciting new Athena-related science; and, finally, is part of the scientific organising committee of special sessions during the European Astronomical Society annual meetings and the Athena conferences.

• Keeping the Athena community informed on the status of the project with the newsletter, regular releases of brief news, and weekly news on the Athena community web portal and in the social channels (Twitter and Facebook).

• Developing communication and outreach activities that are openly distributed to the community.