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Summer Visit - 2013 - CM4Sy

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 CM4Sy team came to visit in July 2013. The core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] It was a great experience working with that kind of astronomical data.
  • [student:] It seems that many people believe that astronomers are either extremely geeky people who live with their noses buried deep in their computers and whiteboards or people who chart stars by looking through telescopes all night. In reality, they are people who are very smart, love their jobs, and are extremely excited to share their work with others. I did expect to be working with computers (particularly Excel), but I was grateful for the history of our project and the ability to learn more about our project before diving straight into the more complicated aspects. For example, plotting all the data we were given was much harder and took longer than I had formerly expected.
  • It was most rewarding to watch my students gain confidence in science and to shed some self-doubt. I think I shed a good deal of self-doubt as well.
  • I discovered that astronomers are just regular people that don’t know everything. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. They are just passionate about what they do and are rewarded for that passion with admiration (but not necessarily money) from the general public. They have cool jobs in awesome places, but most do not get rich from their pursuit of knowledge. Access to data and astronomical images is easy. It is coming up with great questions that makes an astronomer great.
  • [student:] I have found that astronomy is much more than peering through telescopes. Astronomers analyze data collected from various instruments and observatories to either prove a theory or to make new ways to explain the universe.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - CM4Sy