• NASA
  • IPAC

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:

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

 

Quotes

  • [student:] [As a result of NITARP,] I have more confidence in myself that I can tackle challenging topics that I have no previous knowledge of and can eventually work through them
  • [student:] Now I feel more comfortable in both communication and comprehension of topics in astronomy as compared to the mindset I held before taking part in the program.
  • [...]one of the greatest lessons I think I learned about professional scientists… they are drowning in challenges but keep smiling, keep questioning, and keep persisting. Building in the necessity of that kind of resiliency can’t be faked.
  • [student:] Experiences like NITARP teach participants to take responsibility for their own learning. For example., If I wanted to get good at the software we used for this project, the onus was on me to practice and learn it. There was no grade nor enforcer making me. I think this accountability to one’s self is valuable, and absent from current education systems. Experience like NITARP teach participants how to teach themselves and learn on their own whereas traditional school often just drags students along to where they have to be without regard to the underlying quality of the students learning.
  • [student:] I was fascinated by how rich a picture of the cosmos we are able to put together with such scant information from it. I think it’s really cool that we can know so much about our universe just by measuring the amount of light coming from different directions and how wiggly that light is.

Related Teams

A NITARP pause: we are not expecting to be able to support a NITARP 2026 class as a result of the current funding uncertainty. We hope to resume in 2027.