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AAS - 2014

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 2013 and 2014 NITARP teams attended the 2014 January AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD (outside of Washington, DC). The 2013 class was presenting results and the 2014 class was starting up. We had a lot of alumni raise their own money to come back as well. We sent about 75 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. One of our participants, Peggy Piper, participated in a Congressional briefing on Thursday! All the posters we presented are linked from the team's pages below, except for HG-WELS and SIRXS, because they are the two new teams.

Quotes

  • [student:] I left [the AAS] wanting to look at the next BRC and want to keep learning astronomy.
  • [student:] This experience changed the way I thought about astronomy. Originally, I honestly thought it was pointless. I mean what could have been so important looking up at the stars? I realized how terribly wrong I was when I started going to the many different talks. What I found out is that we need astronomy. Astronomy, from what I have gathered, can tell us about the past of the universe, and predictions on the future. We have created tools that can literally see and reconstruct what the past sky looked like as well as project what the future of our solar system will become! Astronomy is an amazing field, and we have only unlocked a very small portion of what the universe is like. Given time we might one day understand what is really going on out there.
  • I found a wonderful book on The Mathematics of Astronomy. It is fairly simple in concept, and as I leafed through it, I realized I am doing A LOT of what is in that book … just not maybe intentionally mentioning the math part as much. So I am purchasing one of these and will rethink some of what I teach next year, and perhaps incorporate some new areas of math into my science classes.
  • I found [astronomers] to be approachable, willing to talk with mere mortals such as myself, and more than happy to explain their work. Everyone I talked with at poster sessions and elsewhere was enthusiastic and excited about their discoveries. It was the kind of community of learners that I try to model in my classroom, and it will be the most important thing I take back from the conference to share with my students – that astronomers are regular people who are happy to share what they know. The second most important thing is that they can do this, too (and will be doing this) and there are no barriers to their becoming professional astronomers if they want to.
  • [student:] I realized how much more is involved with astronomy than just telescopes and night skies.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014