Summer Visit - 2013 - CM4Sy

Quotes

• I was most surprised at how well my students took to the work. Prior to the trip, they worked to understand the project proposal and researched the instruments, but they seemed a bit detached from it at home. Once here, though, they engaged much more intensely, asked more questions, and really wanted to do a great job. Without prompting they all took out there computers and continued making graphs with our data set at the airport while waiting for our flight home.
• I was surprised at how open the analysis was. I expect to be told what to find, however, we didn't know what we were going to find. I found that very cool.
• [student:] I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of astronomy and the astronomers because of this project. I have also found that I find astronomy incredibly interesting and fascinating. If I didn’t have the opportunity to go on this trip then I never would have found out that I am really interested in astronomy.
• I knew that astronomers conducted most of their research with computers accessing data from distant telescopes and spacecraft, but I didn’t realize how much of it is available to the general public and how readily available it is to amateur astronomers and other interested folks.
• I also learned that modern astronomy research is often conducted using vast databases of archived data collected years previously. When my past students did astronomy research projects, they used data that they themselves collected[..]. After working at Caltech with the group, though, I have come to realize that what my students have been doing previously were small projects compared to our AGN study—they were really just glorified lab activities. I have been giving a lot of thought to this since I returned home and am planning major changes in the sort of projects that my research students will be working on in the future.

Related Teams

• CM4Seyferts/Gorjian