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Summer Visit - 2017 - CephC:LABS

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 CephC-LABS team came to visit in June 2017. The core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] I was expecting the most amount of work I have ever done, and I was a little frightened I wouldn’t be able to keep up at all. The work proved to be intense, but not too much.
  • [student:] The best part of the trip was working with a real research team and helping each other figure things out that we didn't even have the answers to. Another fantastic part was learning so much, so fast. I enjoyed the fast pace because it kept the work interesting.
  • [student:] I've always thought that astronomy involved looking through telescopes in some manner, and was almost completely blindsided when we spent all of our time in front of a computer. I was pleasantly surprised!!
  • In order to be an astronomer (or any scientist) you have to be able to accept the fact that there are mistakes which must be worked through. An astronomer must have the stamina to work through things to solve problems. Also, astronomers must be highly creative in order to devise solutions to very unique problems.
  • The work we conducted at Caltech could not have been accomplished online. The benefits of all working in the same room were enormous. We could get/give help, ask questions to Luisa in person, and check our answers. There is no way I could have a thorough understanding of the SEDs, aperture photometry, or the color-color and color-magnitude diagrams without hearing the description from Luisa, working on it, asking questions, collaborating, and working some more. I believe we could have benefited from having one more day (or even half day) as a work day similar to the Thursday workday.

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Summer Visit - 2017 - CephC:LABS