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AAS - 2012

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 2011 and 2012 NITARP teams attended the 2012 January AAS meeting in Austin, TX. The 2011 class was presenting results and the 2012 class was starting up. We sent about 60 people to the AAS (the largest delegation to date) and had a grand time. Please see the special article on NITARP at the AAS. We also got a smattering of coverage in local media outlets.

Quotes

  • At this year's AAS conference I was even able to get a grasp of what the speaker was discussing in most lectures I attended.
  • I was bombarded with a lot of information in a short period of time. I had no idea there was so much research going on in Astronomy. Astronomers are very eager to explain their research and future goals. A very friendly bunch.
  • While working on our [project] it didn't seem as though we were part of a larger connection, but after coming here it feels like a group effort.
  • I assumed that [this project] would require a great deal of data analysis, what I didn't grasp until after this meeting was how focused and detailed the analysis would be. The steps in understanding that are gained through the analysis are much smaller than I anticipated they would be for the amount of work that is done.
  • I think that the most surprising thing about it was how young everyone was! I absolutely did not expect that, maybe because the amateur community is so much older by comparison, and is mainly composed of retired people.

Related Teams

AAS - 2012