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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:] Going to this really made me turn towards Astronomy more when thinking about plans for my future. It’s definitely really interesting and space is so...fascinating. I always liked it when I was little but I always had it set in my mind that becoming something like an astronomer was extremely difficult and nearly impossible...but coming to the AAS meeting has really made me consider trying for it.
  • [student:] I went to the public policy session that had a panel of people from the government. †I was surprised to learn that the people who act as advisors and such for science policy in the Congress actually have strong backgrounds (PhD/experience) in science.
  • It was very satisfying to be able to converse with the grad students about their science and actually understand what they were talking about. I felt proud when several of them remarked that they were surprised to learn that the research was undertaken by teachers and their high school students. They were surprised I was a teacher and that my students were “only in high school.” I guess we challenged several of their preconceptions about what teachers can accomplish.
  • 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:] My favorite part of the AAS conference was the posters. It was so interesting and exciting being able to connect at a more personal level with the astronomers. [..] All the presenters were very friendly and eager to share their information, which was all so fascinating!

Related Teams

AAS - 2014