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:
- 2014 teams
- Self-funded alumni teams
- Science Poster - Bensel, et al., "Survey of Light Pollution in the Rogue Valley, Southwest Oregon, St. Mary's School, Medford, Oregon"
- Education Poster - French, et al., "LASSI Launching Astronomy: Standards and STEM Integration"
- Education Poster - Johnson, et al., "Astronomy Across State Lines: A Collaborative Project for Astronomical Research"
- Education Poster - Kelly, et al., "Next Generation Scientists: Creating Opportunities for High School Students Through Astronomical Research"
- Science Poster - Rutherford, et al., "Color-Magnitude Relationships Among Quasars and Type I Seyfert Galaxies"
- NITARP management
Quotes
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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.
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In the past, I had never tried to use raw astronomical data (such as .fits files at various wavelengths) for stars or open clusters because I didn’t know how to analyze it or where to find it. Now that I know both, I have already begun to create and test lesson plans that teach my students how to do such things as create representative color images from IR data, chart SEDs, or even do photometry or more advanced analyses. Now my students can do real science, and hopefully take the next step of getting our own telescope and camera and taking our own photos at chosen wavelengths, reducing the images, and analyzing the results.
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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.
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[student:] I’ve always planned to study some sort of science, though I’ve never been sure what kind. This experience has made me more comfortable with the idea of pursuing a field like astronomy, which I hope to major in and potentially even go into as a career. But I also became aware that there are many other fields, from engineering to computer science, that intersect with astronomy and it made me interested in pursuing those in the future as well.
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Coming to the conference was very beneficial because it is re-inspiring to get out of the classroom and back with the scientific community. It makes the job of teaching seem even more important and makes me want to go back and enthusiastically involve my students (who are all girls) in research and unique learning
opportunities.
