• NASA
  • IPAC

NASA/IPAC Teacher
Archive Research Program

How it works

I've been involved in many professional development activities and this is by far the best one I've ever done

Chelen Johnson

SHIPs/Ali

SHIPs/Ali

The goal of SHIPs (Searching Herschel Images for Protostars) is to find and identify stars in the earliest phases of formation in NGC 281, a.k.a. "the pac-man nebula".  These stars will help us understand the history of the star formation process in that region.

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Our Participants Talk About NITARP

  • Powers

    [The most interesting thing during the summer trip was] the change in the students and their growth in confidence. The a-ha moments when the big picture came into focus for them. The tour of
    JPL was fantastic, too.

  • Novatne

    I assumed that [research] would require a great deal of data analysis, what I didn’t grasp until after this[, my first AAS] meeting was how focused and detailed the analysis would be. The steps in understanding that are gained through the analysis are much smaller than I anticipated they would be for the amount of work that is done.

  • John

    NITARP is an outstanding opportunity for teacher professional development through participation in authentic astronomy research. If you are a science or math teacher, I would encourage you to apply. It was the best professional development program I have been involved with in my 30+ years of teaching.