This is a team of US high school students who represented their country at the International Olympiad for Astronomy and Astrophysics this past summer in Romania. The IOAA is an international astronomy competition for students grades 9-12.
Before this, the U.S. has participated in physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, and even computing Olympiads, but never in either of the astronomy Olympiads. Disappointed that national astronomy organizations told us they didn’t have the resources to create a U.S. astronomy Olympiad, I and five other high school students started our own National Astronomy Olympiad. With almost no money and little outside help, we created a test, administered it to around thirty kids around the country, and picked the top five scorers to compete (above). This year, we are adding additional rounds of competition to encourage students with a wider variety of skill levels. The first round, in February, is multiple choice, with a practice round in December, while the second round, in April, will be extended response.
Though we hope to grow, we cannot do it without help. We need help in some of the following areas:
1. Money. Financing the students’ travel to the international competition costs money, and just as the other Olympiads do, we want to finance students’ travel so that no student is prohibited from competing at the international competition because of money. In addition, we want to hold a training camp on a university campus to give contestants practice with telescope observation for one part of the competition, and that cannot happen without money. The universities charge us per student for stay and food, so the camp cannot happen without money. Unfortunately, the donations right now aren’t tax deductible, but we are working on becoming a non-profit, and once we do they will be tax deductible. However, we promise that none of us profit AT ALL from any money collected. It all goes into the organization savings and student travel finance.
2. Writing/grading tests: we need qualified teachers, astronomers or physicists, and even college students and graduate school students to help us create test questions and grade tests.
3. Spreading the word. Many students don’t know about this opportunity, so we need to tell as many people as we can.
So if you can donate or help grade and create tests, please email the team at [email protected] or message me, spacelover17. Also check out our website, www.usaaao.org, for information about competition, last year’s test, NAO and IOAA syllabus, and more. The PayPal link has now been added on our website. In addition, SIGN-UPS FOR THE FIRST ROUND ARE NOW AVAILABLE UNTIL DECEMBER 12! If anyone is interested in preparation help, they can message me and I can send them my notes and practice problems that I’ve created for my astronomy club at my high school. I don’t promise it’ll be comprehensive, or that I’ll get around to all topics on the syllabus, but it’s a good starting point.
If you cannot do either, please reblog at least! And also tell anyone you think might be interested in this, because many other people don’t have tumblr. You never know who might want this more than anything. We are new and unknown, and do not have much help for publicity, so the more people find out, the better. So please reblog and spread the word. Thanks!