• NASA
  • IPAC

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

  • [Before this,] I had two visions of astronomy: telescopes and massive equations/data tables. This trip really emphasized that its not just telescopes and equations, but tangible data and analytical skills. It was really rewarding for my high school students and I to analyze this real data. It was also very interesting to learn that the data is public and anyone can use the data to learn science.
  • 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.
  • The most important thing I learned is that doing astronomical research is easily doable by anyone, anywhere who is inspired to do so. You don’t need to have your own telescope or even to go to an observatory. You can access archival images, photometry, and other data for just about any question you might have regarding not only galaxies, but so much more. Tools are being created and refined by NASA and its outreach programs all the time that allow students and regular citizens to participate in authentic research. The sky is no longer the limit! I will be able to engage my students in our own projects like this. Our only limit will be our ability to come up with questions.
  • Doing research just generates more questions rather than resolving them!
  • I was most surprised at how well my students took to the work. Prior to the trip, they worked to understand the project proposal and researched the instruments, but they seemed a bit detached from it at home. Once here, though, they engaged much more intensely, asked more questions, and really wanted to do a great job. Without prompting they all took out there computers and continued making graphs with our data set at the airport while waiting for our flight home.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2013 - CM4Sy