• 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

  • [student:] I never really considered pursuing a career in astronomy or astrophysics beforehand, but after doing real scientific work with the subject matter, hearing speakers from this field, and touring facilities like JPL, astronomy and astrophysics has suddenly become so much more intriguing to me. It was great to have this "real-world" scientific experience.
  • The visit seemed absolutely crucial to me because the time we spend in person is about ten times as productive and meaningful as the time spent on telecons and over e-mail. There is something about being in a room together that really pushed out understanding and work forward tremendously.
  • [student: Real astronomers] have to be willing to feel stupid or dumb at times. This program really showed us that you're going to mess up and that its okay. Sometimes your data will be wrong or you worked a problem wrong. It is going to be okay. You can't always expect the right answer on the first try.
  • [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.
  • Team build, team build, team build. The work is so much more successful and enjoyable if you build the trust.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT