• NASA
  • IPAC

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:] 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.
  • [student: This experience] opened my eyes and showed me that there is SO much more to astronomy than I had previously thought.
  • [at the AAS:] It has been a long time since I sat in a giant lecture hall and wanted to jump up and down…The presentation by Dr. Alyssa Goodman, Linking Visualization Understanding in Astronomy, was exactly what I have been looking for in my teaching. I cannot wait to put it all to use.
  • [student:] NITARP definitely changed the way I thought about astronomy for the better. I thought before that it was more about literally looking through telescopes, so was often surprised when people thought it would be a field I should follow. I was pleased to learn throughout this experience that the field is in fact a very mathematical and calculating field with a fascinating theories being built on constantly. The field is a truly a community, strongly linked. The understanding of the field that I gained through this program has opened a new field of study to my eyes as a career path in my future.
  • Being at AAS was overwhelming, but enormously informative. [..] the best thing about the event was simply seeing how business is done. Some questioners at talks are part of informed discourse, some are competitive, some are off the wall, and some have an axe to grind. But mostly what came through powerfully -- and really changed my image of the field -- is how intensely collaborative the work is for the most part. I had never been to a poster session at an academic conference before. When I’ve seen high school poster sessions they seemed contrived to me. Now I understand what they are trying to model.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014