Writing a haiku to accompany your abstract is a long-standing tradition of the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Here are some of our favorites from this year’s program.

Way back in 2001, Allan Treiman decided to write a haiku.

Treiman was preparing an abstract for the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) about an instrument called the Alta II Spectrometer, which he and his colleagues thought could help students learn about light and remote sensing.

“I cannot remember what it was that inspired me to make a haiku,” Treiman, a planetary scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, told Eos. It was “one of those random thoughts I assume most people get.”

Maybe it was to make his abstract pop out from the hundreds presented at LPSC, or maybe it was just for fun. Whatever his inspiration, he put fingers to keyboard. Out popped the very first LPSC haiku:

Bright leaves on dark sky

Beyond the brilliant rainbow

Vision fades away

A haiku is a traditional Japanese poem formed from 17 syllables and split up into three lines. The first line consists of five syllables, the second line has seven syllables, and then the third line contains the final five syllables.

The LPSC program is chock-full of haiku—there’s even a best-in-show contest this year. Nowadays, the LPSC program is chock-full of such poems—there’s even a best-in-show contest this year—but that wasn’t always the case. After Treiman’s haiku in 2001, the tradition didn’t catch on for a few years. In 2002 and 2003, there were only three haiku. In 2011, there were 10. After that, the tradition started to catch on, with 55 in 2014, 195 in 2016, and this year a whopping 221 haiku.

“I think of the haiku to be a sneak-peek, like a movie teaser, but not the whole trailer” for a presentation, said Caitlin Ahrens, a Ph.D. student at the University of Arkansas’s Center for Space and Planetary Sciences. “It puts in perspective how to explain your research using less words.”

This year, Ahrens wrote two haiku, both about research on different aspects of Pluto:

Pluto glacier slides

Rippling from slow collision

It’s a young feature

Carbon monoxide

Does it mix well with others?

Various changes

To celebrate this delightful tradition, we’ve sifted through this year’s abstracts from LPSC, which will be held in The Woodlands, Texas, from 19 to 24 March. Below are some our favorites, paired with their abstract titles. If we missed any particularly spectacular ones, please let us know in the comments!

High-Resolution Topography of Pluto and Charon: Getting Down to Details

Pluto surface pitted

Nitrogen ice sheet deep or flat?

Vigorous and sublime.

By P. Schenk et al.

The Role of Tides in Forming the Tiger Stripe Fractures on Enceladus

Enceladus fails

Are tides the culprit, we ask

Maybe in thin ice.

By A. R. Rhoden et al.

Microbial Ecology of the Johnson Space Center Meteorite Curation Lab and Associated Infrastructure

Clean is not sterile

Fungi are overlooked

Life uh finds a way

By A. B. Regberg et al.

Discovery of Alunite in Candidate ExoMars Landing Site, Mawrth Vallis: Evidence for Localized Evaporative Environments

Salty, localized

Mobilized aluminum

Alunite is found

By A. M. Sessa et al.

Noachian Intercrater Plains Bedrock Units Show Variable Olivine Enrichment

THEMIS spectra show

Olivine enrichments might

Not be volcanic

By J. C. Cowart and A. D. Rogers

Ice Caps Under Sand Caps Under an Ice Cap: Revealing a Record of Climate Change on Mars with SHARAD

Polar cap-ception:

Ice under sand under ice

Radar reveals it

By S. Nerozzi and J. W. Holt

Fault Rock Evolution of Large Thrust Systems on Mars

As thrusts on Mars grow

And offset accumulates

Wear on faults makes gouge

By Christian Klimczak et al.

Mapping Bennu with Sunlight and Lasers: The SPCOLA Methods

Two instrument suites

Two topographic techniques

Two ways to combine

By J. H. Roberts et al.

Ceres: Jawbreaker or Creamy Nougat Center?

Deep within Ceres

Mysteries still confound us

Is it mud or ice?

By S. D. King et al.

Convective Instability in Horizontal Decompaction Channels Inside Planetary Lithospheres

Melt gets stuck going up

Lithosphere porous layer

Convection onset

By J. Schools et al.

Thermal Moonquakes: Implications for Surface Properties

Sunrise and sunset

Cracking, creaking, and rumbling

The Moon never rests

By R. C. Weber et al.

Mars 2020 Cache Curation Protocol: Developing a Mars Regolith Analogue

Pick Mars regolith

Does it matter where we go?

Magic mixing starts

By L. C. Welzenbach et al.

Spectral Analysis of Lunar Cinder Cones in the Marius Hills Volcanic Complex

Glassy cinder cones

They can take three shapes or hide

Seeking spectrally

By M. J. McBride et al

Topographic Degradation by Impact Cratering on Airless Bodies Is Dominated by Diffusive Erosion from Distal Ejecta

Gentle lunar seas

Far away the ground is struck

Craters melt away

By D. A. Minton et al.

We saved our favorite for last. After all, we’re just specks of dust tumbling in turbulent flow from one place in time to the next…

The Importance of Sand for Understanding Dune Processes and Surface Conditions of Titan

A handful of sand

Brought by wind from close and far

The world in a dune

By Jani Radebaugh et al.

—JoAnna Wendel (@JoAnnaScience), Staff Writer