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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

  • I was surprised that I was capable of understanding most topics I encountered. I attribute this to people's willingness to start from the beginning and to explain things at a beginning level. The result was I eventually felt perfectly comfortable asking absolutely anyone to explain his or her research. That took several such conversations, but the experience has been very empowering.
  • This experience changed my thinking about astronomy a great deal. I am now seeing [astronomy] as a large umbrella that covers many specialties.
  • [student:] I would [tell Congress] that students cannot have a more privileged opportunity. I have heard the possibility of this program shutting down, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart to think that others might not have the opportunities I’ve had, that others might not know what astronomy feels like, what TRUE science feels like. They may never get that hand that pulls them through the door and into that magical world of curiosity, of discovery, of innovation and revolution. 6 letters that changed my life. I would assert that Congress do everything in its power to divert more money to education focused specifically on astounding projects like this one.
  • [student]: I did not anticipate the overall goal of the project to change. However, I now know this is to be expected in a real research project.
  • [student:] I didn’t anticipate how friendly professional astronomers would be to high school students. They were really open and excited to share their work and genuinely interested in what we were doing. I definitely didn’t expect the range of projects that they covered and it piqued my interest in many topics and in pursuing astronomy as a profession.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015