AAS - 2023

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. 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 2022 and 2023 NITARP teams attended the 2023 January AAS meeting in Seattle, WA. The 2022 class was presenting results and the 2023 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 30 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here:

2022 Teams:

Ciambra et al., A More Complete List of YSO Candidates in AFGL 490
Benter et al., Survey of the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products (SEIP) Catalog for Potential Debris Disks Around Main Sequence M Class Stars
Bonham et al., NGSS Science and Engineering Practices in Secondary Education through Real Astronomical Research
Swigert et al., Teacher Roles within NITARP: a 13-month Research Collaboration

Alumni:

Granucci, "Does a Solar Telescope generate more interest in astronomy than Night Observing Telescope?" (talk)
Kniezewski, "To Rain or Not to Rain: Correlating GOES Flare Class and Coronal Rain Statistics" (poster and press release; student alumna!)

Quotes

[student:] I underestimated how vast the astronomy field truly is. There are so many aspects and levels of careers.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve already referenced the content of our NITARP project in class as we talk about various topics, I’d have well north of a couple bucks. Even more important than the content, however, is the process. I’ve been teaching the scientific method for over 20 years, but have never formally done it in the form of scientific research. Well, that changed with NITARP. As I move forward, I plan on incorporating more authentic scientific research into my class, not always in formal research, but simply in regular labs and activities: I’ll try to get the students to ask questions, decide what data they need, good ways to collect and analyze that data, think about their results and come to conclusions, and then report their findings to others, just as we did in our project.
I thought I understood how very focused a research project was, but it is even more so than I thought. Each published paper has a ton of info on a narrow topic (with lots of data). I just thought research was more like a textbook - lots of connections to other knowledge and sciences. "Big picture" stuff might get lost sometimes.
[student:] I’m still not sure what I want to pursue in my life, but this experience has definitely opened up a lot of new possibilities that I hadn’t considered before. I got to see what a real scientific research project could look like, and had a blast attending the AAS. Before this year, I wasn’t thinking about going into Astronomy as a field of study or career path, but now I am.
It was great feeling like we could actually ask questions and get real answers.

AAS - 2023

Quotes

Related Teams