• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2024

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 2023 and 2024 NITARP teams attended the 2024 January AAS meeting in New Orleans, LA. The 2023 class was presenting results and the 2024 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the press release on NITARP from the AAS, and the special online article about NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here. (In addition to the iPoster sessions as listed here, the physical versions of the 2023 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2023 teams:

Alumni:

  • 167.01 Sperling et al., Student-Led High Altitude Ballooning into Solar Eclipses (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.03 Rebull et al., NITARP Lesson Plans: Bite-Size Pieces of Authentic Science Research Experiences (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.06 Newland, Using Google Colab to Teach Hubble-Lemaitre's Law with BOSS Data (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 176.02 Rebull et al., Young Stellar Object Candidates in IC 417 (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 203.03 Wojciak et al., Exploring Color-Magnitude Relationships Among Quasars with z between 1.5-1.75 (Tuesday 9-10)
  • 458.21 Jones & Rutherford, The Three-Dimensional Structure of IC 2391 (Thursday 1-2)

Quotes

  • I still think attending AAS is the most interesting part of the experience. As a teacher, watching the subject you teach grow and change right before your eyes is pretty incredible, and as a non-professional astronomer, being so fully embraced by the professional community is a huge ego boost. :)
  • The reason that schools offer business, agriculture, engineering, etc. courses is to give students a sense of what that career is like. NITARP is one of the few opportunities that students get to experience what a “career” in science is like. For teachers, NITARP can showcase and teach the skills that are necessary for success in a scientific career and allow teachers to better educate their students on what that career path is like.
  • [student:] This experience did most certainly change the way I thought of astronomers. Before NITARP I thought astronomers only looked at pictures and made conclusions based on what they say, but going through this program showed me that this would not me further from the truth. I realized that astronomers also have to work with a lot of numbers as well as large data sets.
  • I hope to shift more from the “survive” to “thrive” mode in implementing what I’ve learned and experienced in NITARP. While “authentic scientific research” may not always be practical in my 41-minute high school science classroom, I still want to bring along and model the same wonder, curiosity, optimism for self-improvement and self-actualization, and sense of community that I experienced in NITARP.
  • I have gained more confidence in classroom and feel less like I’m the “sage on the stage” doling out wisdom and freaking out when I don’t know something and feel more like a collaborator, someone who’s there to help my students figure out a solution, not just give them one.

Related Teams

AAS - 2024