• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2020

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 2019 and 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2020 January AAS meeting in Honolulu, HI. The 2019 class was presenting results and the 2020 class was starting up. We had 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:

2019 Teams:

NITARP Management:

Returning Alumni Teams:

Quotes

  • Students learn more from doing and by doing a real research project they learn more than any standardized test could ever hope to measure.
  • What I’m excited about is building my skillset and credibility as an authentic astronomer in research.
  • I was intimidated at the start of this project because I felt like many of the people on my team and people that I saw present at the AAS last year knew more than me. But, after the whole experience is now completed, I have learned that the area of astronomy is so vast that no one is an expert on everything. I learned to appreciate the skills/knowledge that I brought to the team as well as everything that I learned from my teammates.
  • [student:] The most interesting thing I learned is the fact that the astronomy community, including the astronomers at NITARP, were very collaborative and certainly friendly. I usually just assumed astronomers kept to themselves and/or thought that they were too good to help a high school student like me understand their research. This welcoming community did not at all follow my expectations and showed me that the professional astronomy field, and hopefully other STEM fields, are friendly.
  • [student:] Not only do we learn educational topics with the science content but we also learn those 21st century skills of working with other people, and through this experience it is so much more than just working with peers it is working with people of all ages and from all over. It is learning how to navigate difficult new concepts and work in a professional way with people you have never met face to face. This experience gave us a glimpse into the world of NASA that people from my area don’t get the chance to see.

Related Teams

AAS - 2020