PHY530 students visited Phoenix, Arizona for an astronomy Conference.
Andover students taking the Astronomy Research class (PHY530) attended the annual American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference last week in Phoenix, Arizona. Each year, the AAS meeting draws over 3000 participants annually, making it the single largest professional astronomy conference in the United States.
This year, the event occurred during the first school week back from break, causing student attendees to miss classes. Aurelia Zhang ’27, a member of the Astronomy board, described her experience.
“There were these presentations and sessions where undergraduates got to present their posters. It’s a big gallery. You could stop in front of anyone and talk to them about their poster. [There were] telescope manufacturing companies and just all kinds of institutes giving out flyers and merch. Most of [the conference was] gallery walks. There were also smaller breakout rooms that focused on, for example, exoplanets or neutron stars. It was a mix of everything,” said Zhang.
Caroline Odden, the Dean of Studies and an Instructor in Physics, chaperoned the event with fellow Instructor in Physics Dr. Jose Manuel Zorilla. In an email to The Phillipian, Odden reflected on the utility of the event for students’ learning experience.
“Andover has been taking students to this meeting since 2012… Attending a conference like this and developing comfort with the way it works builds confidence in students. A highlight of the trip was running into Fred Javier and Jeremy Lin at the conference. Fred and Jeremy both took the astronomy research course at Andover. They have continued to do astronomy research in college and attended the conference to present their research,” wrote Odden.
For Henry Zimmerman ’27, astronomy interests him due to its interdisciplinary nature, combining many aspects of physics. He also shares that while deeply understanding scientific information is vital, astronomy allows for deep thinking and inference.
“With astronomy, you’re given the opportunity to see how far your inferences can take you. Given a few specks of light and a whole lot of physics and deep thought, you can ascertain so many properties of various objects in our universe,” said Zimmerman. “A big part of science is knowing your stuff. It’s really difficult to get along in science with that alone. You need to be able to work collaboratively with others and draw on experience from different disciplines.”
Edward Zhang ’27, an associate board member of the Physics Club, emphasized why having an astronomy background was pertinent to making the most of the conference. He valued the connections he was able to forge while attending.
“My favorite part of the conference was getting to meet people. Each company had their own stand, and it was just really cool to walk around because they have a lot of opportunities, and everybody there is talking about what they’re doing in their field. For instance, there were some Harvard professors and researchers who were working on a huge catalog of data and also working on applications of machine learning,” said Zhang.
Overall, Zimmerman gave the conference high marks and strongly recommended it. While reflecting on his own experience, he gave a piece of advice for future attendees of the conference.
“If you do end up going to the conference, I would recommend emailing some researchers who are either presenting or might be in attendance at the conference and asking to meet with them if you’re interested in their work, because scientists are very willing to meet with high school students who are interested in them. You’ll also get a lot of valuable information both on your own research and on the fields and various career paths, but also you’ll get the experience of learning from their immense wisdom and knowledge,” said Zimmerman.
