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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

  • [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.
  • [student:] Our teacher gave us the basic rules, and just let us go. In the beginning, we had no idea where to start. We were supposed to pick a topic of research and I remember being so used to teachers telling me every single thing I had to accomplish and every thing I wasn’t supposed to do or try. This project taught me that you will never get a checklist in a scientific career. There are no answers yet, and it’s up to you to figure them out. This is why I have trouble with the way students are taught in school. It’s easy to get an A when you have everything you’re supposed to do as a checklist, but there is no learning in that. You can’t fail at something that’s already done for you.
  • [student:] I remember telling my teacher how jealous I was that others got to do this for a living.
  • The thing that most surprised me [...], was how objective astronomers was in their conversations. Conversations with scientists are all about data, learning about a system, and objectively trying to determine an answer. It can seem like they are stepping on toes, or even being rude, but once you realize that they are just trying to uncover an answer or ferret out an idea, and then it is no big deal.
  • [student:] [NITARP is] going to change my outlook on the presentations I might give to a class. I now understand that presenting research is just as important as the research itself.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015