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AAS - 2022

The Winter American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting is usually 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. At any given AAS, then, we could have two NITARP classes attending - those finishing up, and those getting started. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The 2020/21 and 2022 NITARP teams had planned to attend the 2022 January AAS meeting in Salt Lake City, UT. However, the meeting was entirely cancelled due to COVID. We still have this special article about the NITARP teams finishing and starting up. All of the posters from the 2020/21 teams we presented are here. Most of the 2020/21 teams came instead to the June 2022 AAS meeting in Pasadena, CA instead. Those posters were iPosters, so the PDF versions that are here are still the versions from Jan 2022, but the numbers are from June 2022.

The 2022 class got started on Jan 9, just before when the winter AAS would have been held. There are two teams in 2022.

Quotes

  • NITARP is the shining example of science outreach to public education, and should be a model for similar federal entities, such as CDC, DOE and even the NEA. Any entity currently providing grants could make their impact more palpable by sharing their work and culture directly with high school teachers and students as NITARP does. A program like NITARP turns teachers into adult representatives of the discipline at its heart; a program like NITARP makes every day in the classroom a Career Day.
  • [student:] I have always wanted to be an engineer, and although NITARP hasn’t changed that ultimate goal, it has given me an extreme passion for research. Now, I want to get involved with undergraduate research as soon as possible in college, and without NITARP, I don’t think that interest would have emerged.
  • The most interesting part of the whole experience was getting a glimpse of what real Science research is like–and just how variable it can be. I thought it was amazing that when the data wasn’t showing us what we expected, we were able to use different tools and shift our understanding fairly quickly.
  • My experience with NITARP has reinforced that the essential traits of an astronomer are a willingness to question the “obvious”, wonder about what is not yet known, and persistently (and openly) recognize the limitations of your present understanding, knowledge, skills, tools… and then do something to overcome the limitations. It has also become crystal clear just how small of a community the world of professional astronomers really is at present. It was also amazing to see how openly the data is shared for anyone with the time, talent, inclination, etc to pursue astronomical inquiry. And putting these last two together… there is SO much data filling the bucket that there is no shortage of questions to ponder nor data with which to pursue resolving them.
  • I am pursuing personal growth in terms of introductory level gathering of spectroscopic data and its analysis. I am pursuing knowledge and skill to transform my theoretical understandings of astronomy into practical real-world, data-driven inquiries for my students… variable star observing, color imaging, astrometric tracking of asteroids, etc.

Related Teams

AAS - 2022