• 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

  • The most interesting thing I did over the whole year was seeing the entire process of how [we] thought of [the] research question, then how we would gather the data to explore it (using IRSA) and then learning the software (Topcat) that made sense of the data. The reality of the experience matched my expectations. It was a bumpy process, with points where we needed to pivot.
  • [student:] I didn’t realize how math-involved astronomers are! Not only are they collecting data and observing, but they also analyze, sort, and interpret it.
  • Young people need to be exposed not to just the body of knowledge that science has produced. In the modern world most of that can be looked up anyway. The essential experience that is needed is to see the way in which science works.
  • [student:] I've never had any formal classes in astronomy. I always figured it was similar to cartography, or just making big maps of the sky. I thought it would require a lot of memorizing, like when I had to memorize the solar system in fourth grade. But during this process I learned about the science behind astronomy.
  • [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!

Related Teams

We are pausing the program for 2027 and will not be selecting a new class of participants. Please let us know if you want to be on our mailing list to be notified when applications are next available.