Stellar Education: Teachers Bring Classroom Space Science to Astronomy Conference

Monday, January 10th, 2011 • Feature • ipac2011-002

Real space science and insights into teaching astronomy come straight from the classroom to a renowned international conference this week. Nearly 60 teachers, students and astronomy educators will be on hand to present the fruits of their year-long labor as participants in NITARP, the NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program, at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, Wash. from Jan. 9 through Jan. 13, 2011.

NITARP pairs professional astronomers with eighth grade, high school and community college teachers nationwide to show their students how genuine space research gets done. The four NITARP teams used archival observations by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, an orbiting infrared telescope, as well as other telescopes for analysis and teaching purposes.

"We're getting teachers involved in real astronomy research with real astronomical data," said Luisa Rebull, an associate research scientist from NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, who coordinates the NITARP program. The goal of NITARP is to inspire and motivate students to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as to engage the public in shaping and sharing the experience of exploration and discovery.

Bona-fide scientific and educational chops

Last year's program turned out to be a great success as evidenced by the nine posters being presented at the winter 2011 American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. These posters cover topics such as the tempestuous cores of "active" galaxies to stars that periodically dim to young stars just beginning to shine.

On the educational side of things, other posters explain tools developed by teachers and students to comb large data sets and solve scientific problems. One group, for example, came up with techniques to allow vision- and hearing-impaired students to delve into astronomical science alongside their non-disabled peers.

"The class of 2010 did some amazing work and we are very proud of them," said Rebull. "We look forward to them presenting their hard-earned results to the public." All of poster titles, in the order of their appearance at the meeting, are listed below.

Abstracts

The NITARP posters being presented at the 217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Jan. 9 through Jan. 13. 2011:

  • 142.43 - Gorjian et al., "Determination of the Infrared Luminosity of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN)"
  • 248.10 - Piper et al., "Educational Aspects of Searching for Variable Stars in the Mid-IR Sky"
  • 248.12 - Petach et al., "Using NASA Archives in High Schools to Study AGN"
  • 248.13 - Hoette et al., "Multi-Sensory Approach to Search for Young Stellar Objects in CG4".
  • 257.08 - Seebode et al., "Ring-like Structures Around Epsilon Aurigae Companion"
  • 340.08 - Johnson et al., "Searching for Young Stellar Objects in CG4"
  • 342.03 - DeCoster et al., "Spitzer Observations of Stellar Variability in the Mid-Infrared"
  • 346.07 - Mallory et al., "The NASA/IPAC Teacher Archive Research Program (NITARP) at Pierce College"
  • 346.09 - Stanford et al., "A Tool For Exploring Spectral Energy Distributions in the Classroom"