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Summer Visit - 2016 - LLAMMa

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 LLAMMa team came to visit in July 2016. The 3 core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] Real astronomy is a lot of numbers and a lot of work. I didn’t realize quite how interactive it was with the engineering, I thought they were more separated.
  • It was a real team spirit amongst all three schools. My students were really proud of the work they did and all they learned.
  • ‘Real’ astronomy is not the myth of staying up all night looking through a telescope. It is more so working with data to ask and solve questions. A lot of computer skill is needed.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing that I learned and did not anticipate was the amount of diversity that was present. I would have never guessed that you didn’t need some sort of astronomical background to be a part of the astronomical community.
  • Overall, *all* of my experiences with real scientists, especially those who work in the field to collect data, contradict the simple model of the hypothesis-experiment-conclusion that textbooks taught me and (attempt) to teach students even to this day.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - LLAMMa