• NASA
  • IPAC

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

  • Astronomers need to be independently motivated (be able to work alone with a strong drive) and to also work well in teams (and not just with other scientists). They are problem solvers and love a good mystery. Also, they need to have the patience to stick with a project for years. And they should be able to juggle more than one project at once.
  • [student:] I think seeing the images and comparing them to the SED graphs was surprising. I sort of tied everything we were learning together.
  • [student:] I think patience and determination are two of the most important qualities for an astronomer to have because in astronomy there is typically a wait time for certain data to be collected and observed. It also takes a lot of determination to be able to go through so many sheets of data that may or may not be what you're looking for.
  • The most important thing I saw from the meeting was the growth in the students – not just in understanding the subject and science behind the project but in the levels of confidence and belief they were developing in their abilities and understanding of the real process of science.
  • [student:] Yes. I really like [astronomy]. I had an idea of what [astronomers] did but, actually doing it made me realize how much i actually liked astronomy. And as for astronomers… I realized that there is a large team of people from various backgrounds that contributed in their own ways.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - LLAMMa