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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:] ...this experience has caused me to extend my knowledge outside the classroom; and I am currently working on an independent study in computer programming/computer science that, from what I’ve seen and heard from NITARP and the AAS, I know will benefit me in the future.
  • [student:] Overall, I learned that astronomy is much more of an organized community than I otherwise imagined.
  • [student:] one thing that surprised me: the interest the people took in out research and us as students. Going in to the presentation, I was expecting to be ignored a majority of the time during our shift, but I was pleased when we actually talked to people a majority of the time. It was touching to me that people took the time out of their day to listen to us and give us tips as to how we could improve in the future in this research and as students.
  • I found a wonderful book on The Mathematics of Astronomy. It is fairly simple in concept, and as I leafed through it, I realized I am doing A LOT of what is in that book … just not maybe intentionally mentioning the math part as much. So I am purchasing one of these and will rethink some of what I teach next year, and perhaps incorporate some new areas of math into my science classes.
  • [student:] While I knew that the whole convention was going to be full of people, I didn’t expect it to be so ridiculously full. Nor did I expect to see so many people from areas all across the globe. American Astronomical Society kinda just makes you think “United States”.

Related Teams

AAS - 2014