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Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN

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 HIPS AGN team came to visit in June 2016. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] Seeing people be so passionate about learning something they love and that interests them really inspired me and let me understand why so many people have chosen to pursue astronomy. Plus, I learned that most astronomers are secretly very dorky (the good kind, I promise ☺) and will gladly talk with you about anything “nerdy” (i.e. Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc.)
  • [student:] I now understand that astronomers don’t send spacecrafts to Jupiter simply to blow the minds of children—that’s just a side effect of the greater purpose.
  • [student:] You can’t be afraid to mess up- after all, with most research, you’re essentially paving your own new path, and that in itself is pretty amazing. I hadn’t realized how much of a collaborative effort research could really be.
  • I thought that science has a right or wrong answer. And it still does, the object is either an AGN or a YSO (probably). But given the limited data we have sometimes, we just don’t know and have to make a reasonable guess as to what the right answer is. It gives me a much better appreciation for astronomers who made “wrong” conclusions based on limited data.
  • [student:] I think this will be a common answer, but meeting with the rest of the team was an amazing experience that I know made us more open to sharing ideas with each other, enthusiastic about the work we're doing, and willing to put in effort to learn about/advance the project. The kind of collaboration possible with all of us in one room together was much better than anything online. It allowed us to fire out ideas easily, try different paths out at once, and work quickly.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN