• 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:] 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.
  • [student:] the benefits of actually working together with the group greatly outweigh the financial and logistical hassle. When we were all together, we got to know and understand each other, which in turn improved our ability to work cohesively as a group, which in turn betters our project.
  • To truly make this a successful collaborative effort between all of the teachers and all of the students and to get the commitment to the project it is vital that everyone meet in the same place and work together on site.
  • 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.
  • [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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2015 - LADDT