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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:

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 was also intrigued at how we can figure out so much while knowing so little: just by knowing a few numbers such as the magnitudes at 4 IR channels, we can model and predict debris disks around stars, including size and distance. At the AAS, listening to people’s presentations, it was also interesting to hear how they are able to model distant systems and galaxies with the data they used, and how they can test these models. Before, I would hear of what we thought something might be like, but never heard much about why we thought it was that way or what the next step in our investigation might be.
  • I keep going back to something Varoujan said to us when someone asked the question, “How often do you get the result you expect when you do research?” and he said “Almost never.” It was refreshing to know that not everything works out the way you expect it to, and that’s OK. This is how we learn. I think I had this misconception that scientists have all the answers, which is silly, because I know they don’t and that is the reason we do research.
  • It was great feeling like we could actually ask questions and get real answers.
  • I know so much more about the wealth of information available to me, so we are going to be using a lot more actual, real astronomy data in my classroom. Also, I just feel like I know so much more about astronomy so when students tell me they are interested in astronomy I can give them such a clearer answer of what studying astronomy might look like.
  • NITARP gives kids a chance to move from the staged, contained, constrained world of science demonstration and rote learning methodologies to the messy, chaotic, beautiful, and sometimes nonsensical world of real science. Kids get a chance to learn about pushing at the boundaries of human knowledge where astronomers have to use real world data that does not necessarily fit any previous theory about what is supposed to happen. Teachers and students have to learn about the technology and use their brains to consider the meaning of this data, looking for trends and similarities to tease out possible explanations.

Related Teams

AAS - 2023