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Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417

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 IC417 team came to visit in June 2015. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • Astronomy research often involves using public astronomy archives, and sometimes it only involves using archives. Success in astronomy is not just a result of brilliance (though brilliance doesn’t hurt). Success also requires quite a bit of persistence.
  • [student:] I am also glad to say that whole reason why we are doing this makes more sense to me as a student. Before I knew what we were searching for but even then I didn’t realize how big of a deal it really was.
  • The students always impress me. This year they exceeded expectations in their ability to make their computers to what they needed them to do. I was surprised by how efficiently the group attacked the various tasks in the research process. I feel very good about where we are and I am optimistic that we’ll follow through with some nice results.
  • [student:] I got to deal with the frustrations of being wrong and trying to figure things out, but I also saw the creative solutions people come up with to solve these problems. I also learned how important it is to code and that fluency in at least one relevant computer language is very important.
  • [student:] An astronomer must never stop asking questions.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - IC417