Chelen Johnson
IC417 : using WISE, 2MASS, Spitzer/Warm IRAC, UKIDSS, IPHAS, and literature optical data to look for young stars in the IC417 region.
NITARP also gave me a lot of confidence to explore other projects and other ways to do professional development. It's given me a lot of ways to further explore astronomy, and it's given me the confidence to do that.
Science in the classroom can get so abstract, and after 20 years of teaching, I want to find out how people are using all of this math I'm talking about in class. I've always had an obsession with astronomy and physics, so NITARP is perfect for me.
I already had a pretty good idea of how astronomers do science, but NITARP helped me see more exactly how data is collected, processed, and analyzed. It helped me also see that I can do astronomy myself, and can make a contribution beyond my own classroom. Not only can I analyze astronomical data to find scientifically useful results, but I can publish my work as a poster and be part of this community. I did not feel like a stranger or usurper or even out of place – it felt like I belonged.
