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

I tended to lump astronomy in with theoretical physics and its stagnation to some extent. Obviously, the opposite is true. The pace of discovery and analysis is amazing.
The most interesting thing is just how impactful working with teammates/students is for your results and overall experience of the program. Constantly interacting every week and then seeing everyone in person drastically changes the research dynamic.
[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.
My students were inspiring during this project, even when frustrated. They wanted to keep plugging through even when it was hard.
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.

AAS - 2023

Quotes

Related Teams