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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

  • I love learning about the myriad ways astronomers figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons. It almost seems like cheating sometimes, but it isn't. Astronomers are just so crafty when it comes to figuring out how to make the best use of the data they have.
  • NITARP was a great experience for both myself and my students.
  • [student: This experience] opened my eyes and showed me that there is SO much more to astronomy than I had previously thought.
  • [student:] The most important thing I learned at the AAS was how close knit and accepting the astronomical society truly is. I think often the sciences are made out to be highly exclusive, in that you must be a genius in order to make any meaningful discoveries, and that there is a lot of deeply entrenched competition between scientists. But, experiencing the AAS conference has shown me that not only do people from around the country collaborate with one another to perform research, they also have a wonderful alacrity to explain their findings to everyone[...]
  • I found [astronomers] to be approachable, willing to talk with mere mortals such as myself, and more than happy to explain their work. Everyone I talked with at poster sessions and elsewhere was enthusiastic and excited about their discoveries. It was the kind of community of learners that I try to model in my classroom, and it will be the most important thing I take back from the conference to share with my students – that astronomers are regular people who are happy to share what they know. The second most important thing is that they can do this, too (and will be doing this) and there are no barriers to their becoming professional astronomers if they want to.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014