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Summer Visit - 2014 - SIRXS

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 SIRXS team came to visit in July 2014. The core team educators attended, plus 11 students.

 

Quotes

  • [student:] I did not expect how much improvisation had to be done. I knew that there would be many issues in dealing with the data we had, and we did not have solutions to all those problems before hand, but I did not expect just how many caveats had to be worked out.
  • I already understood, intellectually, that modern astronomy can involve computers more than it does telescopes. Public archives, however, are new to me. I think I could never fully appreciate that cutting-edge research could be fully accomplished simply by downloading public files from the internet without having fully participated in the whole process. Now I appreciate the depth and enormity of the Spitzer archives. This resource truly democratizes astronomical research!
  • [student:] Real astronomy requires a lot of time looking at data on computers and less time looking through telescopes.
  • [student:] I was somewhat surprised that the catalogue was publicly archived. I think it is an amazing opportunity for non-astronomers to do some "real" science, or simply learn new skills.
  • [student:] Yes, I was under the impression that astronomy wasn’t a difficult scientific field to study and that astronomy deals mainly with planets. But now, I can see that there is so much more to astronomy than just planets. There are a lot of unknowns and to study astronomy you need a strong and talented brain. You also need patience, focus, and passion for it.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2014 - SIRXS