AAS - 2021

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. This year, the pandemic forced the Jan 2021 meeting online, and meant that we didn't select a new class for 2021, so only one class is attending the online AAS.

The 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2021 January AAS. We sent about 30 people to the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2020 Teams:

Science Poster - McElroy et al., "OIRMA: Optical Infrared Reverberation Mapping of AGN"
Science Poster - Anderson, et al., "Identifying Candidate Young Stellar Objects in the Spider Nebula (IC 417) Using Archival Visible and Infrared Data"
Education Poster - Rodriguez et al., "Methods for Retention and Promoting Self-Efficacy in Secondary Students in Astronomical Research"
Education Poster - Sharif et al., "Rich Experiential Education in a Remote Setting by NITARP"

Also see video "turbo talks" from ORMA team : science and education.

Quotes

Bracketing the NITARP experience between an opening and a closing AAS meeting empowers us as participants to see that the process we are developing and the research we are doing is legitimate. The opening meeting sets a model in our minds for what the end of the project will look like. The closing meeting makes us defend our work… the real closure on science… peer review! The overall experience makes it clear to me that I am in the right place professionally. I love the research process.
[student:] I was fascinated by how rich a picture of the cosmos we are able to put together with such scant information from it. I think it’s really cool that we can know so much about our universe just by measuring the amount of light coming from different directions and how wiggly that light is.
[student:] Experiences such as NITARP help start teachers and students down a road of curiosity. If there is one thing I’ll remember doing in NITARP, it’ll be asking questions. Instead of sitting in silence wondering what to do, I was encouraged to ask questions, and when that happened, I would always get a reply that sparked my curiosity even further. Having the ability to observe the world around me and wonder how it works is something that would not have happened without NITARP.
[..] as someone who has both careers in science and education, this is the most authentic experience I've had that satisfies both. I never felt like I was just a teacher observing, nor did I wonder how to take it back to the class.
[student:] The first time getting to use the IRSA Viewer software along with DS9 really opened my eyes to the professional realm of astronomy. Having understood and interacted with such advanced programs blew away my expectations. As a student I am conditioned to always expect a modified version of data or curriculum fitted to accommodate a learning situation, but the NITARP program gave me that taste of what it all leads to at the end of my educational career.

We're back from the Jan 2024 AAS and we had a grand time!

AAS - 2021

Quotes

Related Teams