• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2022

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is usually 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 2020/21 and 2022 NITARP teams had planned to attend the 2022 January AAS meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. However, the meeting was entirely cancelled due to COVID. We still have this special article about the NITARP teams finishing and starting up. All of the posters from the 2020/21 teams we presented are here. Most of the 2020/21 teams came instead to the June 2022 AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA instead. Those posters were iPosters, so the PDF versions that are here are still the versions from Jan 2022, but the numbers are from June 2022.

The 2022 class got started on Jan 9, just before when the winter AAS would have been held. There are two teams in 2022.

Quotes

  • The NITARP experience is guided by Jedi Masters… they perceive the force and guide it to flow through the process in harmony with the dynamic interactions between the science, the data, the people, and the products that all need to dance together to achieve a meaningful result. The impact on the participants of NITARP is significant, measurable, positive and spiritually inspiring. We come out the “other side” of the NITARP experience a changed person in ways that we never could have created on our own… so THANK YOU, Thank You, thank you for the wonderful opportunity that is NITARP.
  • ...learn enough to answer 80% of your questions while recognizing 10 new ones, and getting just enough data found, crunched, visualized, considered and understood to still not quite have caught up with your goals. But that is science… the real-world, messy, challenging, inspiring world of science. Embrace your curiosity, embrace the opportunity to question and to explore, embrace the 80% success that you will achieve because that, along with the remaining 20% you will never get to, is what the next scientists in the line will be able to pick up and run with as the data that drives their inquiry. You are scientists in a long line of scientist that have been, are, and shall always be… so have FUN with it!
  • My experience with NITARP has reinforced that the essential traits of an astronomer are a willingness to question the “obvious”, wonder about what is not yet known, and persistently (and openly) recognize the limitations of your present understanding, knowledge, skills, tools… and then do something to overcome the limitations. It has also become crystal clear just how small of a community the world of professional astronomers really is at present. It was also amazing to see how openly the data is shared for anyone with the time, talent, inclination, etc to pursue astronomical inquiry. And putting these last two together… there is SO much data filling the bucket that there is no shortage of questions to ponder nor data with which to pursue resolving them.
  • Look at where my kids are now. Their resumes are leaps and bounds better. Their confidence in talking with other students, teachers, and scientists has gone off the charts. We really changed their paths.
  • The most interesting thing continues to be the experience of being treated as a social peer of scientists. This improves my confidence in the classroom when working with any kind of science. And I believe this confidence, rooted as it is in both the NITARP social experience AND the experience of actually having done some science (!!), is palpable to my students. This confidence makes me a more qualified emissary of Science to my students.

Related Teams

AAS - 2022