• NASA
  • IPAC

AAS - 2025

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 2024 and 2025 NITARP teams are attending the 2025 January AAS meeting in National Harbor, MD. The 2024 class is presenting results and the 2025 class is starting up. We had alumni raise money to come back as well. We sent about 40 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 2024 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2024 teams:

Alumni:


Quotes

  • This experience absolutely changed the way I perceived astronomy & astronomers. Learning about the research process was an eye-opening experience. Knowing where to find readily available data [...] was impactful. Astronomers are the nicest, funniest and most inclusive community.
  • I’ve added an assignment related to IRSA data into my MATLAB programming class. I’m also more motivated to get my students to conferences in general.
  • I really want to authentically develop my personal skill sets so I really know how to do things. This means really committing to learning itself and not just the outcome of learning.
  • I [am starting to understand] how much this [NITARP] experience was here to help me as an educator and to be honest, I realized how much I could use that help. It seems like what I am teaching is far from how science really happens. I thought I knew this, but I really got a sense of the divide at AAS.
  • [My] conversation with my team felt surreal because it totally went above and beyond my expectations for what I thought my first meeting would be like. I think it surprised me how dedicated the experts were and how open they were to having these casual conversations with us -- and how they seem to genuinely enjoy giving us their time and attention.

AAS - 2025