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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

  • 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:] astronomers .. are normal people who have chosen a career that interests them, but they are also interested in telling jokes, learning about things they don’t know, have hobbies, and other things that are just like everyone else. I am not sure what I thought they would be like instead, but I was surprised anyway.
  • I have been a teacher for 38 years, and have been in probably 18-20 special programs over that time to improve myself as a science teacher. The NITARP program ranks as one of the three best programs I have been in over that period of time. It helped make astronomy “doable” … learning to use the Kepler databases and some of the instruments, like periodograms, phase binning, etc., stretched us as teachers/student, yet helped us to realize we can do true scientific research. I personally thought our project was engaging to our students and myself, and wasn’t just another “cookbook exercise.”
  • [student:] The thing I liked most about the program was the fact that high school students were given the opportunity to participate in significant research. [..] The fact that no one knew the answer was extremely exciting. I never enjoyed the regurgitation of information that high school provides us. I understand that it is necessary to learn the basics and the only way to learn that is to solve problems that have already been solved. But this program has given me the exclusive opportunity to experience in simple terms: real life. Thank you and I hope the program continues to provide remarkable experiences.
  • [After going to an AAS town hall:] I am glad my paycheck does not derive from NSF funding.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014