USAAAO

You have until January 31st to register for the First Round of USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition. We already have students from 25 states and 12 countries registered.

Students must be present at the specified exam time that depends on the time zone of a student. First Round is on Saturday, February 11th. Second Round time slots will be the same.

To register, please use this link. Registration this year is $30 per student. If you’re unable to pay, please register by using this form. You don’t need to fill out both forms. We want to make sure that everyone that wants to participate has the opportunity to do so.

The slots are:

Slot 1: 9am West Coast time (same as 12pm East Coast Time, 2pm Brazil time, 7pm Romanian time, etc.)

Slot 2: 9pm East Coast time, which translates to 5pm Alaskan time and 4pm Hawaiian time.

Note: students are responsible for double checking the time difference

For more information about the selection process visit our Selection Process page. If you’d like to receive notifications about future opportunities, join our mailing list here.

Registration for the first round of USAAAO is open!

The registration forms are on this page. There is a fee of $30 to register, but we have a financial aid application for those who need it.

Registration will close on January 31st, 2023.

The first round exam will take place on February 11th, and there will be two time slots available to accommodate students in different time zones. The competition will be online, and students will be proctored by USAAAO volunteers through video calls.

You can read more about the tests on our selection process page, and you can find study materials on our resource page. If you have any questions, email us at info@usaaao.org! For more frequent updates about USAAAO, visit our Instagram page.

We’re excited to announce the schedule of USAAAO for the upcoming year!

The whole competition will be online. USAAAO volunteers will be proctoring the exams. In order to accommodate different time zones, we will be offering 2 time slots. More details to follow.

Jan 3rd (2023)-Jan 31st (2023): Registration

February 11th: First Round Exam

April 1st: National Astronomy Competition

August 10th-20th: IOAA in Poland

Registration will open on our registration page, so get ready and spread the word! If you want an email announcement, join our mailing list here. The registration fee this year will be $30, however we will accept financial aid requests.

You can read more about the tests on our selection process page, and you can find study materials on our resource page. If you have any questions, email us at info@usaaao.org!

Around three hundred students from forty-five countries competed in the 15^th International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in Georgia the country between August 14th and August 22nd. The American team achieved an amazing result with ten medals (3 gold, 3 silver and 4 bronze).

Main team:

Samvit Das – gold medal
David Zhang – gold medal
Erez Israeli Miller – silver medal
Justin Chen – silver medal
Abhay Narasima Bestrapalli – bronze medal

Guest team:

Evan Kim – gold medal
Andrew Liu – silver medal
Orion Foo – bronze medal
Austin Chen – bronze medal
Arjun Patel –bronze medal

Team Leaders: Natasa Dragovic (Tufts University) and Lucas Pinheiro (Notre Dame)

Training was conducted by volunteer mentors through video calls with the team members.

The USA team was selected by volunteer members of the USAAAO (USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Organization) based on candidates’ results in a selection exam. The next IOAA will take place in Poland in August 2023.

The USAAAO team is extremely grateful to the “The Masson Family Fund” for their generosity. Because of the support of the Mason Family, USAAAO could cover the team’s travel, accommodation and food expenses. We’re also thankful to law firm Prince Lobel for legal representation.

For more IOAA moments, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

This is a free online summer camp to help students learn astronomy and astrophysics. It is intended for students* who may not otherwise have the resources to begin studying on their own, and to increase awareness at the high school level of how exactly professional scientific research is conducted.

Students who choose to participate in the camp are expected to attend weekly online meetings and do the required readings and problem sets.

Weekly classes will be held on Tuesday evenings between June 14th and August 2nd

Applications will be open until May 29th at 11:59 pm Eastern Time.

Link for the applications: https://forms.gle/xTWufTTEj8hgyU72A

For any questions, email us at info@usaaao.org!

* camp is currently limited to U.S. Citizens and Permanent Residents.

We are excited to announce the 2022 team. We will bring two teams to the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad in Georgia in August.

Main team:

Abhay Narasima Bestrapalli

Justin Chen

Samvit Das

David Zhang

Erez Israeli Miller

Guest team:

Andrew Liu

Orion Foo

Austin Chen

Evan Kim

Arjun Patel

You can see the score breakdown here. Team leaders this year will be Natasa Dragovic and Lucas Pinheiro. Stay tuned to learn more about the team!

Team travel is possible due to the generous donation from the Masson Family Fund.

We will also post all the scores on the website later today.

If you have questions about the competition, feel free to email us at info@usaaao.org.

We thank all the volunteers and participants that have made this year possible!

National Astronomy Competition took place on March 26th. We want to thank all the participants and volunteers for making this event a success!

You can find question and solutions here. We will take some time to grade the exams. All the contestants will be notified of their score and scores are published on the website as well.

Top 5 students will be invited to represent the US at the International Astronomy and Astrophysics Olympiad. Next top 5 students will be invited to be part of the guest team.

This year IOAA will be held in August in Georgia. We will announce the team shortly.

All the exams that have been to submitted have been graded and students should be able to review their score on Gradescope! This year the cutoff is 13 and up. Currently there are 96 students that qualified for the National Astronomy Competition (NAC).

Exam and the solutions can be found at https://usaaao.org/resources/.

Thank you all for participating and being interested in Astronomy and Astrophysics!

For all the students that qualified for the National Astronomy Competition, we will be emailing further instructions closer to the exam time.

We want to thank everyone that took part in the First Round yesterday. We also want to thank all the teachers and USAAAO volunteers for all their hard work. We will post an update in about a week about the exam scores and the cutoff for the National Astronomy Competition.

Exam and the solutions can be found at https://usaaao.org/resources/.

Thank you all for participating and being interested in Astronomy and Astrophysics!