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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

  • The students were also great to work with—not only mine, but those of the other teachers as well. They were a great bunch of kids to hang out with. It was really great getting to work alongside them instead of in the usual student-teacher sort of relationship—I’ll miss them, too.
  • I really enjoyed meeting members of the other NITARP teams and comparing their experience to mine. Everyone’s experience was different, but there seemed to be an overwhelming consensus that NITARP was the most significant, educational, and enjoyable professional development experience they have ever had. I could not agree more.
  • Thanks again for this amazing opportunity. I really hope it can continues even in light of the difficult financial times. It would be a terrible loss if it went away because it feels a very specific niche that is not met by any other program I have seen.
  • What amazed me was how ingenious astronomers were with using data to its fullest and finding patterns in data that one set of astronomers see as unwanted “noise” in their data. One astronomer's noise as another astronomer’s treasure!
  • [student:] After seeing professional astronomers present and give lectures, I do believe that astronomers are some of the smartest people around but I also believe they are also some of the most curious because almost every single person at the AAS meeting discovered something new that the world has never known before.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014