• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2024

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 2023 and 2024 NITARP teams are attending the 2024 January AAS meeting in New Orleans, LA. The 2023 class was presenting results and the 2024 class was starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 50 people to the AAS and had a grand time. Please see the press release on NITARP from the AAS, and the special online article about NITARP at the AAS. All of the posters we presented are here. (In addition to the iPoster sessions as listed here, the physical versions of the 2023 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2023 teams:

Alumni:

  • 167.01 Sperling et al., Student-Led High Altitude Ballooning into Solar Eclipses (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.03 Rebull et al., NITARP Lesson Plans: Bite-Size Pieces of Authentic Science Research Experiences (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 171.06 Newland, Using Google Colab to Teach Hubble-Lemaitre's Law with BOSS Data (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 176.02 Rebull et al., Young Stellar Object Candidates in IC 417 (Monday 5:30-6:30)
  • 203.03 Wojciak et al., Exploring Color-Magnitude Relationships Among Quasars with z between 1.5-1.75 (Tuesday 9-10)
  • 458.21 Jones & Rutherford, The Three-Dimensional Structure of IC 2391 (Thursday 1-2)

Quotes

  • Most of the time from Jan – Oct ’23, I would just say incorrect stuff when trying to talk through the project. It was frustrating thinking I had gotten a handle on one aspect of the project only to be misunderstanding some other aspect. The gentle but constant correcting of [our mentor scientist] was absolutely necessary and useful to the group as we all made these mistakes. Also meeting every single week meant that we all got very comfortable talking to each other and saying the wrong and not bristling at being corrected. Also [our mentor scientist] took a lot (a lot…) of questions from us and the students which again just made the whole group feel comfortable and able to press forward confidently.
  • [student:] The research conducted during the experience was the most interesting thing we did as we were literally making new discoveries that nobody had ever done before.
  • Given the longevity of the program, the consistency of the mentor astronomers and the inclusion of a mentor educator, I had expected the year to be somewhat prescribed and a path forward to be well-trodden. This was not the case (in a good way!) There were certainly deadlines to be met and techniques which had been employed successfully in the past that we newbies could use, but our original research was just that! Original! The end was not in sight at the beginning, and we ran into issues during our year which we were able to work through together.
  • The work that is done [in NITARP] is NGSS at it’s heart. Students and teachers do real, hard research where Google won’t help. Students can learn that science really is a best effort to expand understanding and knowledge (after covid the public perception of science has taken a hit with some groups).
  • I still think attending AAS is the most interesting part of the experience. As a teacher, watching the subject you teach grow and change right before your eyes is pretty incredible, and as a non-professional astronomer, being so fully embraced by the professional community is a huge ego boost. :)

Related Teams

AAS - 2024