• 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 main resources [we used] were the image data set that are available via the IPAC and other resources for our archival work. This combined with the tools that are integrated to allow easy searching for, processing of, sorting, summarizing, etc of the information was amazing. This combined with the ability of our professional astronomer to allow the space for us to experience the learning curve for what is available, how to get it, manipulate it, summarize it, analyze it and then to finalize all of that with the magic mojo of coding to crunch all of that into code to crank out hundreds of products ready for the next steps in the process was so impressive and empowering. I may not have the time to become a coder, but I appreciate the talent and skill that it brings to the science more so now that I have completed NITARP.
  • I always wanted to publish, as I said in my original application to the program. Somehow, being exposed to the papers in this most recent literature search, and realizing that writing papers is part of your lives, finally got me moving. Now, just today in fact, I sent off my first peer-reviewed paper with what should be the last round of editorial revisions! So, thank you for normalizing publishing to me.
  • NITARP is the shining example of science outreach to public education, and should be a model for similar federal entities, such as CDC, DOE and even the NEA. Any entity currently providing grants could make their impact more palpable by sharing their work and culture directly with high school teachers and students as NITARP does. A program like NITARP turns teachers into adult representatives of the discipline at its heart; a program like NITARP makes every day in the classroom a Career Day.
  • 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.
  • [student:] One important thing NITARP has taught me is when working in a group environment, disseminate work to other people rather than trying to take on the whole load of the project by myself. In NITARP, it would’ve been impossible for one person to do all of the work, and splitting everything up made the whole project work more effectively and efficiently. I am going to try and carry this strategy into other group work I do in school.

AAS - 2022