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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:] I never realized that a lot of astronomy is looking through data collected by previous missions. I also learned that astronomy is pure science, and involves lots of theorizing.
  • [student:] One of the best things about the trip was really getting to look through the data and make the graphs, so that the results of our study were visually apparent. It was like the ‘Aha!’ moment.
  • [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.
  • One student [...] has told me she now is interested in engineering as a career and all are interested in pursuing their own astronomy research for science fair competitions. I have several new students who have come to our school specifically because of this project and the chance to do some real astronomy.
  • [student:] Before this trip, I thought that astronomers looked through telescopes much more than I thought.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2014 - HG-WELS