AAS - 2026

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 2025 and 2026 NITARP teams are attending the 2026 January AAS meeting in Phoenix, AZ. The 2025 class is presenting results and the 2026 all-volunteer self-funded alumni class is starting up. We sent about 35 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 2025 teams' posters were up at the IPAC booth all day Tuesday.)

2025 teams:

220.01 Edwards et al., “Stellar Rotation Within the Beta Pictoris Moving Group Using TESS Lightcurves”
403.01 Molohon et al., “Student and Teachers as Scientists: The Impact of Authentic Astronomy Research Experiences”
403.05 Pfahler et al., “From NITARP Experience to Community Practice”
406.04 Cullen et al., “Using Spitzer Space Telescope data to catalog short-term variable AGN for determining the size of accretion disks”

Alumni

104.08 Sperling et al., "Evaluating Educational Outcomes of the HERA Secondary–Higher Education High-Altitude Ballooning Research Program Across Pilot Sites"
136.08 Cohen & Sperling, "METEOR: A Low-Cost, APRS-Based Flight Computer for High-Altitude Balloon Missions"
217.04 Schwarz et al., “Star Finders: Assembling a Multi-Wavelength Catalog of Young Stellar Objects in Serpens Main”
403.02 Kuper et al., “From young stars to active galaxies: Development of foundational lessons for authentic astronomy research”
403.04 Newland et al., “Photometric Catalog Integration in a Python Framework for Spectral Energy Distribution Construction and Young Stellar Object Classification” - possibly better formatted version here
403.06 Bechtel, “NITARP Influences Multiple Generations, Communities, and Careers”
403.07 Blackwell et al., “Stellar Life Cycles: Improved Methods of Education”

Quotes

[this experience] didn't really change the way that I think about astronomers, but I was given a front row seat and participatory role in learning how creative astronomers have to be. I really think the indirect way many things in the cosmos have to be studied is very cool and exceptionally creative. It actually more so changed the way that I feel about myself. I now see myself as someone who is capable of doing important research even if I don't have a PhD in astronomy. I also feel like I have some support in [..] our mentors and team members if I wanted to try out my own research project.
I think I [now] will be able to illustrate the process of collecting data, analyzing data, and presenting results much better for my students. I may even encourage them to engage with scientific research papers and real graphs and plots from current research in class. I realize that I never really reference current astronomy research in the classroom. Instead, I stick more to popular science articles, canned labs, or old timey research from the early days of astronomy (like Kepler & Newton). My students are interested in more current topics. I feel like through this I'll be able to connect what I teach to more real-world applications in astronomy.
The research itself was exciting and inspiring. I felt like I was given the chance to actually apply much of what I know about astronomy to actual things in the cosmos.
I had never looked at scientific research [from the literature] in this way—as in, I was invested in this research [from the literature] because I was using it as a foundation for my own team's research goals.
I hope my next educational development experience can live up to NITARP. Most are condensed experiences that train in doing classroom curriculum or re-creating the research of others, but I really enjoyed doing research that was meant to be shared and presented at a conference.

AAS - 2026

Quotes

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