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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:] At the conference, I learned astronomers were much more approachable than I had expected. I anticipated them to be cold and condensing [condescending] towards me since I am only in high school, yet everyone I interacted with was friendly and welcoming. I really enjoyed the experience because [..] I really think it opened my eyes to the “adult” world. The entire program helped [me] to grow as a person and come to learn more about myself and what I want to do as an occupation. I am very fortunate for this opportunity and I hope everyone continues to learn and grow from this incredible experience.
  • [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.
  • My students now view research as done by ordinary people, who enjoy looking for unknown patterns and abnormalities in data, yet also enjoy “coaster flipping” in the restaurant and crack jokes when the working environment gets tense, just to lighten the mood and help us remember that exploration is fun!
  • [student:] The experience was great and any opportunity to do primary research is always going to be interesting and you’ll always learn something new.
  • My students now see themselves as capable of more than they had before but more importantly see themselves has having a future in the world they saw through the program. Attending the AAS is an important culmination of the experience that ties the importance of science research together and offers an important glimpse into a world of possibilities for students.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014