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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 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:] I remember telling my teacher how jealous I was that others got to do this for a living.
  • For some reason, introductory astronomy textbooks tend not to focus much on SEDs or color-color plots. However, these tools have cropped up in each of my NITARP projects. I imagine this is not a coincidence! I’d like to find a way to introduce these two key concepts in my introductory astronomy course.
  • [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.
  • [student:] I didn’t anticipate being surrounded by other smart high schoolers. I was pleasantly surprised to meet the other students and converse with them about topics we were passionate about.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015