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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:] 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.
  • 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:] One quality you need [to be an astronomer] is you need to know the numbers/stuff. Also, you must be perseverant. There will be lots of dead-ends where you cannot explain something, and you will need a different approach to discover something new.
  • One of the things that NITARP changed in regards to how I viewed astronomy and astronomers is the use of archived data. Prior to NITARP I always thought of astronomers using data they had collected.
  • [student: Being in person at Caltech was important because] It also helped to have someone explain why we were doing each step and its significance for our overall project. It was also nice to have someone there to check your work and troubleshoot with you if something looks off.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2014 - HG-WELS