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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:] Astronomy is not just a mechanical way of doing things. It also involves culture and personality. Learning these is only possible by meeting another astronomer.
  • [student:] Real astronomy requires a lot of time looking at data on computers and less time looking through telescopes.
  • One happy surprise was the element of serendipity in moving the project forward. I did not anticipate that one of the two post-docs who were sitting in to observe (for education, not science) would suggest that we use software that would change the way we managed our data.
  • [student:] It was exciting that we didn’t have all answers right away (even now, we don’t have answers), so we had to figure stuff out and be logical. It was interesting to meet and work with some really smart people!
  • Being at Caltech also changed my relationship with my students, and in a way that I had hoped for. The limits of my expertise were much more obvious to them. This meant that they had to find other ways to answer questions than reflexively turning to me. We developed more of a sense of being peers in terms of our work together on the project.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2014 - SIRXS