International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA)
Top USAAAO scorers compete internationally against 40+ countries.
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Astronomical League National Young Astronomer Award (NYAA)
A national award from the Astronomical League that recognizes outstanding original astronomical research by US high-school-age students, judged by a panel of professional astronomers; the first-place winner receives a telescope and an expense-paid trip to the League's national convention, ALCon.
Foothill College Astronomy Program (Dual Enrollment)
High school students in grades 9-12 can dual-enroll tuition-free in Foothill College's transferable astronomy sequence (General Astronomy: Solar System; Stars, Galaxies & Cosmology; and the Astronomy Laboratory), which includes hands-on observational and data-analysis projects using real astronomical equipment.
Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture Series
A free public lecture series founded in 1999 at Foothill College featuring leading astronomers, including Nobel laureates and National Academy of Sciences members, presented six Wednesday evenings each academic year and co-sponsored by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, SETI Institute, and UC Observatories.
Las Cumbres Observatory – 100 Global High School Teams
A Las Cumbres Observatory education program that gives high school student teams free access to LCO's global network of 0.4-meter robotic telescopes to observe galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, with online training in astronomical data-analysis tools such as SalsaJ and TopCAT.
Pulsar Science Collaboratory (NANOGrav)
An out-of-school-time citizen-science research program in which students age 13 and up receive training and then analyze real radio-astronomy data from the Green Bank and Arecibo-affiliated telescopes to search for new pulsars; several student participants have been credited as co-discoverers of real pulsars.
UC Santa Cruz Science Internship Program (SIP) – Astronomy & Astrophysics Track
A 9-week summer research internship at UC Santa Cruz that pairs high school students (ages 14-17) one-on-one with UCSC astronomy faculty and graduate mentors on real astrophysics projects, such as mapping galaxy environments with James Webb Space Telescope data or studying stellar populations in M31/M33.