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AAS - 2015

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 2014 and 2015 NITARP teams attended the 2015 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2014 class was presenting results and the 2015 class was starting up. We had many alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

Quotes

  • The first day I was confused and really started worrying about my ability to comprehend the science I was going to need to know. What helped was spending the next couple of days visiting with the students. I realized I was going to be involved in a lot of work but as long as I stuck with it I would eventually grasp the concepts that seemed out of reach. The students spent time explaining as long as I was willing to ask.
  • [student:] I now better understand that there are many, many professional astronomers over a variety of specific fields. (The scale of the AAS convention really demonstrated this.)
  • I realized I hate being in the student role and having that clueless feeling. But I definitely will take this back to the classroom and have more empathy for kids who tend not to ask questions.
  • I really thought astronomers knew everything about the night sky and never realized there were several specializations within the content.
  • My ideas about astronomy has changed significantly, thanks to NITARP. Quite simply, I didn't understand the role of archival data in modern astronomical research. Previously, I considered it an intellectual exercise, work suitable for a reference librarian, but not real research. I now know it to comprise the future of astronomy, and the very picture of MOST of tomorrow's scientific research.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015