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Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS

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 C-WAYS team came to visit in July 2012. The core team educators attended, plus 12 students, and two additional scientists.  Dr. JD Armstrong (LCOGT/UH) and Dr. Babar Ali (IPAC) also assissted.

Quotes

  • I was surprised to see the amount of work was needed for a seemingly small job. To have stayed for such a short amount of time and to have done so much work [..] was overwhelming.
  • [The best thing was] Watching the students interact with each other and with the science. It was great to see kids from different schools working with each other. It was also really great to see the students embracing the science. They asked our astronomers thoughtful questions that showed they were thinking about the process and the science.
  • We did real science!
  • Real astronomy isn't just looking through a telescope and jotting down notes. It involves using data from multiple resources, performing calculations, and making judgments about what is being observed. On the trip, I expected to be working with information from telescopes, but I was not expecting the large amount of conversions that needed to be done.
  • Real Astronomy is doing all the data research. It is not just about viewing [through] a telescope. It's about reading the numbers and understanding it.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS