AAS - 2021

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. This year, the pandemic forced the Jan 2021 meeting online, and meant that we didn't select a new class for 2021, so only one class is attending the online AAS.

The 2020 NITARP teams attended the 2021 January AAS. We sent about 30 people to the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2020 Teams:

Science Poster - McElroy et al., "OIRMA: Optical Infrared Reverberation Mapping of AGN"
Science Poster - Anderson, et al., "Identifying Candidate Young Stellar Objects in the Spider Nebula (IC 417) Using Archival Visible and Infrared Data"
Education Poster - Rodriguez et al., "Methods for Retention and Promoting Self-Efficacy in Secondary Students in Astronomical Research"
Education Poster - Sharif et al., "Rich Experiential Education in a Remote Setting by NITARP"

Also see video "turbo talks" from ORMA team : science and education.

Quotes

[..] as someone who has both careers in science and education, this is the most authentic experience I've had that satisfies both. I never felt like I was just a teacher observing, nor did I wonder how to take it back to the class.
[student:] I was expecting the data to be clear and easy to draw conclusions from. In school-based labs the data is always handed to you on a plate in an easy to digest way. In this case most of the data was interrupted by excess noise, and only 4 out of our roughly 500 sources showed promise. This was disappointing at first, but it also gave me newfound respect for researchers who spend years of their life working on new scientific breakthroughs.
[student:] I never knew how much astronomers worked with computer programs and data, and I think this helped me gain a new sort of respect for them: this is not easy work!
[student:] This experience has taught me to feel okay to not know what the result will be when conducting a science experiment.
This experience definitely gave me a better understanding for what goes into Astronomical research. It opened my eyes to all of the different areas of study, the level of research and amount of collaboration that goes into it. It also helped me understand the sheer quantity of astronomical tools that are used.

We're back from the Jan 2026 AAS and we had a grand time!

AAS - 2021

Quotes

Related Teams