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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:] After having the opportunity to work alongside a professional astronomer on a real research project, I feel like I look at the science fields in a completely different way now. I realize that the universe is messy and confusing and research is really comprised of very educated guesses. This experience has helped me ask questions about the weird data instead of just dismissing it.
  • This is my third AAS. I understand so much more than I did the first time, but I STILL HAVE SO MUCH TO LEARN! This is a fantastic professional development opportunity, and generates so many ideas each time I come.
  • I love learning about the myriad ways astronomers figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons. It almost seems like cheating sometimes, but it isn't. Astronomers are just so crafty when it comes to figuring out how to make the best use of the data they have.
  • [student:] All in all, NITARP really was an amazing experience. The coolest part to me was that I was doing REAL science--we didn't know what sort of answers we were going to get. The chance to do real, original research is irreplaceable. Coming in to NITARP, I had next to none astronomy background. NITARP opened my eyes up to the astronomy field, and I definitely want to take college courses now.
  • All the talks I attended were truly interesting. It is pleasure to have others teach me!

Related Teams

AAS - 2014