At the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), running from January 7 through January 11 in New Orleans, LA, 18 astronomy educators and 21 of their students from the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) are attending.
Not for the first time, Earth Science Science Teacher Joe Perry of Palmyra-Macedon High School has been chosen to work with a scientific research group. Perry teaches Astronomy at Pal-Mac.
For over a decade, NITARP has partnered small groups of educators with a research astronomer for original, year-long, authentic research projects. At the AAS meeting, the educators from the 2023 class, along with some of their students, are presenting the results of their work over the past year. Meanwhile, the educators from the 2024 class are meeting their teams and getting started on their own projects.
From NITARP’s early years through the 2024 class, a total of 145 educators from 42 states have participated or will participate; the 2023 class has our first participants from South Dakota, West Virginia, and Maryland. NITARP works with educators because, through them, NITARP reaches thousands of students per year with information about how science really works, what NASA does, and the wealth of astronomy data that is freely available to the public.
Here are is team that includes Joe Perry from Pal-Mac
NITARP just announced the 2024 class of educators and their teams, as follows: 2024 team working with Dr. Luisa Rebull (Caltech/IPAC):
• Jeff Benter, educator mentor, Tri-Valley High School, Downs, IL
• April Andreas, McLennan Community College, Waco, TX
• David Dahari, Wahconah Regional High School, Dalton, MA
• Joseph Perry, Palmyra Macedon High School, Palmyra, NY
They are meeting each other for the first time at this AAS meeting in New Orleans, and learning about their projects. They plan to present their results, with their students, at the 2025 AAS winter meeting to be held in National Harbor, MD.
IPAC, based at Caltech, in Pasadena, CA, is leading this program. These teams use archival data from the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA), the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), and the NASA Exoplanet Archive, all of which are based at IPAC, and other NASA archive holdings. Funding comes from the NASA Astrophysics Data Program.
More information NITARP can be found on its website at https://nitarp.ipac.caltech.edu/.
