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 attended 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:

171.01 McKay et al., Young stellar students and objects: Illuminating astronomy research for students and teachers (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.02 Hickey et al., Building Confidence and Combating Imposter Syndrome Through Student-Educator Research Projects (Monday 5:30-6:30)
171.05 Garcia et al., Reaching for the Stars: How Research Experience Has Expanded the Scope of a High School Astronomy Club (Monday 5:30-6:30)
181.01 Kuper et al., Looking for Young Stellar Objects in Obscure Sharpless Regions (Monday 5:30-6:30)
201.05 Carpenetti et al., Building a Catalog of AGN with Erroneous Parallaxes Using WISE and Gaia (Tuesday 9-10)

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

The astronomers I met are so down to earth and willing to explain things to me.
One of the best parts of my experience was to watch my students, with very limited science education offered to them at our rural school, work through the challenges.
[student:] The most interesting thing I learned over the whole year of the research was the way how astronomers conduct their research. Before coming into this program, I pictured astronomers to be observers of the night skies most of the time. I didn't realize that data analysis and programming were such huge components of the task. This experience has definitely changed my perspective and my expectations of what I picture an astronomer to be doing.
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).
[student:] I have experienced so many unique things that I literally blew my mind and created a spark in me. I now know that I want to be in the field of astronomy. I have learned so many research, time management, and teamwork skills that will still be with me for my whole life. Overall, NITARP has changed the way I look at the world in terms of science and lit a fire inside of me. It has been an experience that I will stick with forever.

AAS - 2024

Quotes

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