• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT

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 LADDT team came to visit in June 2015. The core team educators attended, plus 14 students.

Quotes

  • It would have been impossible for me to develop the depth of understanding I achieved about our project through telecons. I came to Caltech thinking I possessed a thorough understanding of our project, but quickly realized it had much more depth. We still have much analysis to do that I could not have done without direct supervision. I am much more confident now after having worked side by side with the LADDT crew. Correlating the filters and redshits is still at the edge of my conceptual field, but it is coming into focus thanks to the direct contact I experienced at Caltech.
  • [student:] Some of the graphs and charts confused me at some point, but I was eventually able to work through it once it was explained to me. The support system that we had as a whole was amazing. If I got confused at any point someone would help me. Mostly the teachers helped with the information as a whole, but many students helped with my problems with excel.
  • It was important to work on the data together, as a large team—we were able to pair with new partners and better understand the questions we had.
  • [student:] The most interesting thing that I learned was just how many different jobs there are in the field of astronomy and how they all can work together or separately on different projects.
  • Astronomers need to be curious and persistent. Persistence might involve anything from seeking funding sources to awaiting new technologies that could provide the data you need.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT