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Summer Visit - 2014 - HG-WELS

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 HG-WELS team came to visit in July 2014. The core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

 

Quotes

  • [student:] Real astronomy is really numerical. It’s not looking through a telescope all the time, but I can’t really define “real astronomy.” It’s just kinda studying the sky. I expected to look at pictures of the sky and numbers, which we did. I didn’t think we’d be doing so many maths, just because I didn’t.
  • [student:] I was surprised to learn that we didn’t have the results we thought we were going to have. I also wasn’t expecting to do so much Excel work, but I was glad we did because it was a great opportunity to learn.
  • The excitement about the trip has translated into my having an excellent group of students in my fall astronomy class who are excited about applying what we learned this summer. Four of them have expressed interest in the one available spot on the team.
  • I am surprised with where our analysis has brought us thus far. I know the results are going a very different direction than expected, but I think that's awesome and it's a cool feeling knowing we have already begun to find results that potentially debunk former ones—not bad for a few students and teachers!
  • [student:] The sheer complexity of what we were doing was surprising to me. Yet, the steps were pretty simple. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that I was actually making headway in science.

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Summer Visit - 2014 - HG-WELS