• 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 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:

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 sum of my NITARP experiences have changed my professional goals and career plans. I’m currently a Ph.D. student in STEM Education at an R1 university and hope to influence current and future STEM Educators to embark upon a research process with their students.
  • I have [already] added many examples related to our project as examples in my classes. In some of the lower level classes I use steps in our process as examples for a discussion of the scientific method.
  • [Now, in my classroom,] I really push my students to collect authentic data and we have been practicing our presentation skills a lot more. I also use the charts and graphs during our astronomy unit and talk about the experience with my students.
  • Meeting astronomers at the 2024 AAS meeting who were interested in our work brought home the idea that we were doing meaningful science during the project.
  • [student: Now, after NITARP,] I am a lot more collaborative and open to working with people I don’t know as well. Additionally, I feel a lot more confident asking questions (especially in my science classes), as I’ve gotten to experience first-hand the value of engaging my curiosity in topics I’m interested in.

AAS - 2024