• 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

  • NITARP has given me is a glimpse of an infinitude of pursuable interests.
  • [student:] [This project] showed me the importance of not only performing authentic research, but also by communicating it and involving interested parties that are not professional astronomers.
  • NITARP is not about the answer, but instead about how to find the answer. It can be reinvigorating to return to that wonder about how and why
  • [student:] There are always [...] summer classes you can take or a special class in robotics, but NITARP has shown me that these things aren’t as unique as doing actual research. Nothing beats making an actual contribution to human knowledge, no matter how small it is, and this contribution cannot occur in a classroom.
  • [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.

Related Teams

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