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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:] I really enjoyed talking to everyone at the AAS and having this common interest in astronomy. The coolest part of this was the fact that no matter how young or inexperienced you are, you are still treated with so much respect and enthusiasm, because everyone knows how much work goes into these projects. It was amazing to experience this side of science.
  • [student! :] This experience has changed the way I work in the classroom in that I am applying simple scientific practices to the way I study and do homework, collaborating with others to ensure I have a full understanding of the whole picture.
  • [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.
  • [student:] The experience was one that I could not possibly ever forget.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014