• 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:] Experiences such as NITARP help start teachers and students down a road of curiosity. If there is one thing I’ll remember doing in NITARP, it’ll be asking questions. Instead of sitting in silence wondering what to do, I was encouraged to ask questions, and when that happened, I would always get a reply that sparked my curiosity even further. Having the ability to observe the world around me and wonder how it works is something that would not have happened without NITARP.
  • [From NITARP,] Teachers learn what it is to be overwhelmed by new material that the presenters have long ago mastered. This humbling experience is profound and deepens empathy with students, and leads to better teaching.
  • NITARP has given me is a glimpse of an infinitude of pursuable interests.
  • [student:] I think the value of NITARP comes from experiencing a new way of learning those things. Actual research just isn’t something students can do in school. Sure, I’ve gone through labs before, but it just doesn’t compare to a long, arduous project that is finding something we actually don’t know. There’s a whole new level of value to be gained from feeling like you’re contributing something to the scientific community.
  • 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.

Related Teams

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