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Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 days long and is the only time during the year of work when all the participants on the team come together in person to work intensively on the data. Generally, each educator may bring up to two students to the summer visit that are paid for by NITARP, and they may raise funds to bring two more. The teams work at Caltech; the summer visit typically includes a half-day tour of JPL, which is a favorite site for group photos. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

The HIPS AGN team came to visit in June 2016. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student: This experience changed the way I thought about astronomy and astronomers because] I've interned with astronomers before and thought that the norm was a small workplace of 10-20 people all doing research at about the same level. Here, I got to see the varied specializations people had in just this one building -- different types of engineers, people organizing the data, managing the data, professors, etc. in addition to astronomers mainly doing research. I didn't know anything about how research was done (in terms of proposals and funding and etc.) before this trip. I really, really liked having the astronomers come in to talk about their lives and their jobs. They were candid and personal, which resulted in a very refreshing and in-depth talk!
  • [student:] It was eye-opening and inspiring to realize that there are kids who love science and astronomy all across the country.
  • [student: This experience] made me love the subject more than I ever thought I would have.
  • [student:] I now understand that astronomers don’t send spacecrafts to Jupiter simply to blow the minds of children—that’s just a side effect of the greater purpose.
  • [student:] I think the two most important qualities in any astronomer are hard work and passion. Hard work is necessary in constantly building the knowledge base required to succeed, and passion is necessary in providing the intrinsic motivation required to succeed.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN