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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:] There was a high school event at AAS, I think it was for local high school students who were interested in astronomy. We were planning to go to it but then we found out it was really kid stuff. It was for people on the outside, and we realized that we’re on the inside now, even though we only know a tiny bit.
  • [student:] It is impossible to choose what the most interesting thing was. And yes, it exceeded my expectations.
  • High school students are hungry for authentic research experiences, and both high school teachers and students benefit immensely from having contact with a professional astronomer. This may seem inefficient (because it costs a lot of money to connect individuals with professionals), but it can change lives, and there are wonderful ripple effects.
  • [student:] I realized the importance of group collaboration. You can never really do all of this alone, especially in scientific research.
  • [student:] I learned about new resources that I didn’t even know existed. Almost like finding a new continent, vast and ready to be explored. The scientist helped us get familiar with what the buttons did and how to understand what the buttons did, but we were the ones who decided which buttons to press, and we ended up being excellent and ambitious button-pressers.

Related Teams

AAS - 2015