Monrovia High School, Monrovia, California
General Public: Amateur, 9, 10, 11, 12
Ms. Thompson was part of the NITARP 2012 class.
Ms. Thompson hosted a fabulous ISS Downlink at her school! She lead the proposal that got the ISS downlink, and she also organized a science festival at her school for the previous Saturday. Dr. Rebull brought the IR camera!
Ms. Thompson led a SUCCESSFUL proposal to get an ISS Downlink at her school, scheduled for March 8th, 2013! Way to go!
Ms. Thompson just started with her new 2012 team at the Austin AAS. She very much enjoyed the AAS, especially given her perspective as an educator and an avid amateur astronomer. She also got some local news coverage.
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.
The more I talked with astronomers and support staff at the different booths [at my first AAS], the more I began to realize that being a teacher, and an amateur astronomer, is really very different from being a professional astronomer.
The surprising part of our research was the time we spent on communication, and the value of saying something out-loud has to understanding it.