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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 did not anticipate the heavy use of computer software in astronomy. As a programmer-in-training, I love working with computers. After learning the power of data and plots in astronomy, I must say that it is the career that I have been waiting for so far.
  • [student:] I don't always have to be right to be successful. Sometimes, it's okay to take several roads and make mistakes, as long as there is a somewhat clear goal in mind and a will to work.
  • 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.
  • In both of my NITARP experiences, we have run into major difficulties that triggered a complete reworking of the project. At this point, I think I would expect things not to go as planned on a given science project. This is not a bad thing -- it is just the way things tend to go. We did reach a nice result in both cases, but there were some bumps along the way.
  • [student:] I was worried that they would be boring old man scientists when in reality they were people from all different back grounds talking passionately about what they love.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015