Chelen Johnson
The StarChasers team will be looking for new young stellar objects (YSOs) in the constellation Cassiopeia where other people have already found a few YSOs; StarChasers will be looking to see (a) if the published list of YSOs seem to be real YSOs, given additional data, and (b) if they can find additional YSO candidates.
I think that more than anything else, hearing these kids talk about their work really convinced me how valuable this experience is for students.
The more I talked with astronomers and support staff at the different booths [at my first AAS], the more I began to realize that being a teacher, and an amateur astronomer, is really very different from being a professional astronomer.
Since I teach students how to do research, it would be cool if I was doing research too and show them that I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm doing the same type of stuff that they are doing in research class. I wanted NITARP to help make me a better teacher in research and a better teacher in astronomy.
