AAS - 2017

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is the largest meeting of professional astronomers in the world. NITARP educators attend an AAS first to meet their team, then they go home and work remotely for much of the year, and then attend an AAS to present their results. At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The 2016 and 2017 NITARP teams attended the 2017 January AAS meeting in Dallas, TX. The 2016 class was presenting results and the 2017 class was starting up. We had many alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2016 teams:
- Science Poster - Orr et al., "Finding High Quality Young Star Candidates in Ceph C Using X-ray, Optical, and IR Data"
- Education Poster - Orr et al., "STEM Education is Missing This ..."
- Science Poster - Kilts et al., "Searching for Short-Term Variable Active Galactic Nuclei: A Vital Step Towards Using AGN as Standard Candles"
- Education Poster - Kohrs et al., "NITARP: Changing Perceptions of Science Among Secondary Students and Teachers"
Returning Alumni teams:
- Education Poster - Bensel & Cool, "Are We Alone? GAVRT Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Project"
- Education Poster - Tran et al., "Analysis of Visual Double Stars"
- Science Poster - Johnson et al., "An Infrared Search for Young Stellar Objects in IC 1396"
- Science Poster - Wilson et al., "Searching for Infrared Excesses around White Dwarf Stars"
- Education Poster - Linder et al., "Confirming and Improving Ross Variable Star RV Del"
- Science Poster - Linder et al., "Rotational Study of Ambiguous Taxonomic Classified Asteroids"
NITARP Management:
- Evaluations And Impact (presented as education poster): Rebull et al., "The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP): Lessons Learned"

Quotes

[student:] Presenting the poster was also great because the people that I talked to had such great advice and ideas. One of the best things that I learned about was all the different places to learn astronomy. I got free magazines, and website names that are absolute gold mines of information and I’m really excited to explore those and learn from them. Learning about the formation of stars through the program and how astronomers take and interpret data was interesting to me. It helped me get a taste of astronomy and it’s what made me decide that I want to go into astronomy.
[student:] [this experience] did change the way I thought about astronomy and astronomers. There is a lot of time and effort put into the research the astronomers do. Astronomers also have to have pretty good social skills to be able to present their findings to other people.
The scientific method cannot be narrowed down to 6 simple steps. The process is very much ingrained in trial and error and coming up with new solutions to problems.
[student:] I feel like I’m able to [now] more effectively work for long periods of time, as that has usually been a bit of a challenge. This experience gave me practice in working for a long time and how to work through it.
[student:] A year ago, I would never have dreamed of applying to an Ivy League college. Now, I’ve applied to three. A year ago, I was teetering between art and science. Now, I am looking ahead to a college major and eventual career in astrophysics with the utmost confidence. I am about to embark on a journey into a heavily male-dominated science field with some of the hardest mathematics courses in existence, but I am no longer afraid. I am simply impatient.

AAS - 2017

Quotes

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