The Astronomical League sponsors the National Young Astronomer Award (NYAA) to recognize the outstanding astronomical research achievements of high-school-age students throughout the United States.  Please spread the word about this.

The Application and Award:

To apply, eligible young astronomers should submit the application package by the deadline, March 31.  The package will consist of a completed application form, a well-documented astronomy project of the applicant’s own work, a summary of astronomy-related activities, and optional exhibits.  It is recommended that applicants be members of the Astronomical League, either through an astronomy club or a youth member-at-large membership.  A team of professional astronomers will judge the entries.

An application and instruction sheet for may be downloaded here.  Please follow the instructions completely.  It is recommended that the application package be submitted electronically to NYAA@astroleague.org.

The Award Telescope:

The first-place winner will receive a fine telescope made possible by the generosity of Explore Scientific, which also contributes significantly to the administration of the NYAA program. The first-place and second-place winners receive an expense-paid trip to the Astronomical League national convention (AlCon) to receive their awards.

Other Recognition:

Special plaques are presented to the first, second and third place winners at the league’s national convention each summer. Announcements regarding the top finishers will also be submitted to the major national astronomy magazines, the League’s quarterly magazine, the Reflector and to the top finishers’ local news media.

Past NYAA Top Finishers with Title of Project:

 

Year	Place	Awardee(s)	Location	Title
1993	1st	Blake Warren Thomas	Edgewood, NM, USA	“Spectrographic Analysis of Cepheid Pulsation”
1994	1st	Stephanie C. Cinereski	Gainesville, FL, USA	“Solar Flare and Sunspot Research”
1995	1st	Heather E. Castellano	St. Hedwig, TX, USA	“Elements of Impact Crater Formation”
1996	1st	Mani S. Mahjouri	Columbia, MD, USA	“Simulation of Charged Particle Motion in Jupiter’s Magnetosphere”
1997	1st	Heather Cameron	Greenwich, NS, Canada	“Solar Observation Station”
1998	1st	Mary Dombrowski	Glastonbury, Ct, USA	“Cataclysmic Stellar Variability with Eclipsing Binary Superimposition”
1999	1st	Elizabeth Fernandez	Albuquerque, NM, USA	“Active Galaxies in the Perseus Supercluster”
2000	1st	Patrick L. Kelly	Washington, DC, USA	“The Color-Magnitude Relation in Hickson Compact Group 62”
2001	1st	Susannah C. Lazar	Baton  Rouge, LA, USA	“Performed Photometry of Many Asteroids”
2002	1st	Albert King Lin	Fresh Meadows, NY, USA	“A Survey of the public Chandra Data Archive (CDA) in Search of Serendipitous X-ray Pulsars:  A Systematic Approach”
2003	1st	Maxwell Cassady Moe	Fort Collins, CO, USA	“Demographic  and Atmospheric Effects on the Quality of the Night Sky”
2004	1st	John Davis	Penfield, NY, USA	“Built a Research Grade Observatory From Scratch”
2005	1st	Christopher Limbach	Milwaukee, WI, USA	“Light Curve Analysis of Eclipsing Binary Star EP Aurigae”
2006	1st	Mary Masterman	Oklahoma City, OK, USA	“Investigating Stars and Nebulae Through the Construction of an Astronomical Spectrograph.”
2006	2nd	Daniel Handlin	Lincroft, NJ, USA	“An Empirical Determination of the Effect of Atmospheric Drag on Orbital Decay”
2006	3rd	Benjamin Jones	Helotes, TX, USA	“Achieving Equal Light Distribution: Creating Effective Outdoor Lighting Modifications: A Second Year Project”
2007	1st	Naomi Pequette	Littleton, CO, USA	The Orion Nebula:  A Good Contender for Housing an “Earth-like” Planet”
2008	1st	John Hodge II	Columbia, SC, USA	“Light Curve Analysis of Cataclysmic Variable Star Systems:  Cam Var 06, FS Aur, HT Cas, IP Peg, and EQ Aqr”
	HR	Honorable Mention:  Lara Knorek	Kalamazoo, MI, USA	“Analysis of Light Curves of Supernovae”
	HR	Honorable Mention: Neil Pearson	Evergreen, CO, USA	Exemplary Academic Achievement in Math and Science
2009	1st	Harry Gaebler	Bloomington, IN, USA	“A Study of the Correlation Between Spiral Galaxy Distance and Morphology Using both Redshift and Extended Object Photometry”
	2nd	Jordan Bramble	Virginia Beach, VA, USA	“Asteroid Research Using the Fan Mountain Observatory Rapid Response Robotic Telescope”
	3rd	Gayathri Cheran	Burke, VA, USA	“A Study of the Abundance of Wolf Rayet Stars”
2010	1st	Andrew Hitchner	Norristown, PA, USA	“A Study in Stellar Spectroscopy”
	2nd	Tongji “Youyou” Li	Hershey, PA, USA	“Will Humans Become Extinct Like the Dinosaurs Did?”
	3rd	Erika Tinley	Tucson, AZ, USA	“The Geometry of Active Galactic Nuclei as Evidenced by Their Emission Line Spectra”
2011	1st	Ben Cark	Lancaster, PA, USA	“The Close Binary Fraction: A Bayesian Analysis of SDSS M Dwarf Spectra.”
	2nd	Travis Le	Honolulu, HI, USA	“A Comparison Similar Planetary Systems of WASP-2.”
2012	1st	Justin Tieman	Blue Springs, MO, USA	Alien Worlds; Space Rocks.”
	2nd	Travis Le	Honolulu, HI, USA	“Determining ‘Hot Spots’ through Correlations of CMEs and Solar Flares.”
2013	1st	Mark Morretto	Briarcliff Manor, NY, USA	“Deep Impact Spectral Observations of Naturally Occurring Mini-Outbursts.”
	2nd	Henry Lin	Shreveport, LA, USA	“Cool Bias in Sunyaer – Zel’dovich Galaxy Cluster Surveys.”
2014	Pranav Sivakumar	Barrington, IL, USA	“Morphological Identification of Wide-Separation Gravitationally Lensed Quasars.”
	2nd	Katie Shen	Sterling, VA, USA	“Census of HII Regions in SDSS.”
2015	1st	Theodora Mautz	Portland, OR, USA	“Investigating the Effects of Milky Way Globular Clusters’ Galactocentric Distances on Their Rotational Velocities about the Galactic Center“
	2015	Sydney Marler	Ridgecrest, CA, USA	“The Effects of Interstellar Medium on the X-Ray Spectral Characteristics of Gamma Ray Bursts”​
2016	1st	Jayasuriya Senthilvelan and Swagat Bhattacharyya	Morgantown, WV, USA	“Detection of Interstellar Molecule OH in W3, W49, Cassiopeia A, K350 W75s and NGC 7538 using the 40 ft. Telescope and the GBT”
	2nd	Megan T. Glalluca	Clovis, CA, USA	“Radiation-Hydrodynamic Outflows and Magnetar Glitches and Anti-Glitches”
2017	1st	Perri Zilberman	Bellmore, NY, USA	“The Occurrence Rate of Hot Jupiter Host Stars with Warm Debris Disks”
	2nd	Shan Shanmurugan Selvamurugan	San Jose, CA, USA	“Analyzing the Metallic Tendencies of Terrestrial Planet and Gas Giant Formation and Evolution”
2018	1st	Vivek Vijayakumar	San Marcos, CA, USA	“Analyzing the Expansion rates of Planetary Nebulae.”
	2nd	Pranati Modumudi	San Jose, CA, USA	“X-Ray Study of Multiple Particle Acceleration Zones in the Blazar Mrk 421.”
2019	1st	Ashini Modi	Shreveport, LA, USA	“A Search for Exoplanets in High Metallicity Open Clusters Using a Large Scale Photometric Algorithm”
	2nd	Isaac Broudy	Chula Vista, CA, USA	“Testing Special Relativity with High Resolution Differential Photometry of Eclipsing Binary Systems”
2020	1st	Karen Lei	Saratoga, CA, USA	“Identification of Unknown Source of 21 cm Neutral Hydrogen Emission”
	2nd	Vivek Vijayakumar	San Marcos, CA, USA	“Characterizing the Pulsations of Delta Scuti Stars.”
2021	1st	Ryan Clairmont	San Diego, CA, USA	“Evolution of Cat’s Eye Nebula Revealed Through Morpho-Kinematic and Hydrodynamic Modeling”
	2nd	Tarun Kota	Apple Valley, MN, USA	“Detection and Characteristics of Astronomical Dwarfs Using CATWISE”
2022	1st	Harish Krishnakumar	Richmond, WA, USA	“Analysis of Ring Galaxies Detected Using Deep Learning with Real and Simulated Data”
	2nd	Zadar Haider	New York City, NY, USA	A Novel Method of Transit Detection Using Parallel Processing and Machine Learning”
2023	1st	Tie: Kaitlyn Wang	San Jose, CA, USA	“Discovery of the Smallest Ultra-Short-Period Planet Using GRFC: a Novel GPU-Parallelized Phase Folding Detection System”
	1st	Tie: León Garcia	Corvallis, OR	“Simulating the Dynamics, Collisions, and Morphology of Galactic Ultralight Dark Matter Haloes”