• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer Visit - 2017 - SIRXS-DEEP

The summer visit to Caltech is 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 SIRXS-DEEP team came to visit in June 2017. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.


Quotes

  • [student:] The most surprising thing I learned was that astronomy involves lots of chemistry which wasn't obvious when you first think about astronomy.
  • The face to face interaction and real time collaboration is important for the teachers and students as we are learning new information and techniques.
  • The energy, commitment, and teaching ability of the NITARP mentors is amazing. Luisa and Varoujan are the heart and soul of the experience and make NITARP such a great program. In addition, our team of educators has become very tight and we all are committed to working hard on our SIRXS-Deep project.
  • [student:] The work we carried out at Caltech would be plain confusing to do on the internet, especially learning NASA terms and getting to understand our assignment. [...] Overall, I think meeting together in LA was worthwhile by a mile. We would not have been as engaged in our work without the LA trip.
  • [student: Qualities for an astronomer are] Curiosity and persistence- curiosity is important because it drives research and learning and persistence is important because doing research may not initially yield what you are looking for, but it's important to persist.

Summer Visit - 2017 - SIRXS-DEEP