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

[student, advice to future participants:] It's okay to be lost. The material is hard, you will be very confused at points but it's all a part of the journey.
The role of partnering with educators to both do research and use that research to create curricular materials is something I am learning as a NITARP participant. Much of my career had me working in a vacuum or a silo. It’s refreshing to share the workload and the learning with other professionals who care about the topic.
The reason that schools offer business, agriculture, engineering, etc. courses is to give students a sense of what that career is like. NITARP is one of the few opportunities that students get to experience what a *career* in science is like. For teachers, NITARP can showcase and teach the skills that are necessary for success in a scientific career and allow teachers to better educate their students on what that career path is like.
After this experience, I have come to realize that I have never really taught Astronomy to my students. Yes, they all learned the standards and they passed the course, but they have not learned Astronomy.
It has become a joy to experience the temporary (I always hope) moments where I have absolutely no clue how we are going to make a connection, find a pattern, or convince ourselves of some new truth. It is clearly one of the essential approaches that professionals in science, technology, engineering and mathematics have to have in order to persist through the challenges of going where no one else has gone before. Integrating the comfort with discomfort into the learning experience of my students is one of the most important impacts NITARP has made for me as it has dramatically enhanced the retention of students in the pipeline to a STEM profession throughout their undergraduate, and often through grad school, experience.

AAS - 2026

Quotes

Related Teams