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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

  • I definitely felt more at ease at this conference than last years. [..] I was visiting with all kinds of people, retired Yale professor, grad student from Sicily, etc and not feeling out of place. It was great. I could approach others at the conference with more confidence which changes how I view professional astronomers. I think I could ask for advice on future projects more easily and confidently. I found it a very supportive environment.
  • [student:] This experience made me realize that astronomy is a lot more complicated than what we think. I am so happy I got to have this experience at such a young age because not that many people have gotten a chance to do anything like this in their lives.
  • This is going to change my classroom by incorporating an astronomy club in which we will be continuing the research that I started, generating an outreach program and educating the community about astronomy.
  • [student:] This experience totally changed my view of astronomy and my view of the people who are a part of it. Initially, I thought that astronomy was filled with emotionless scientists who stare at their computers all day. I found that this was not the case at all and I met some of the most interesting people through this program [..]
  • [at the AAS:] It has been a long time since I sat in a giant lecture hall and wanted to jump up and down…The presentation by Dr. Alyssa Goodman, Linking Visualization Understanding in Astronomy, was exactly what I have been looking for in my teaching. I cannot wait to put it all to use.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014