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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

  • There are lots of qualities that are important to an astronomer, but two that come to mind are persistence and diligence. Sometimes, the apparent path to solving a problem turns out to lead somewhere else (or not lead anywhere at all). The astronomer has to be aware of this and know when to change course and try another approach—sometimes, this has to be done over and over again before the research problem starts to show results.
  • [student:] My experience at Caltech was incredible, and I wouldn’t change a single thing. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I met so many incredible people, and without this trip I don’t know if I would have had the courage to pursue astronomy as a career.
  • [student:] Though I don’t like to admit it, I had certain expectations regarding the teachers and students on this trip. To be entirely honest, I was expecting them to be a bunch of socially awkward nerds. Therefore, I was quite surprised to find that everyone was actually very normal—funny, talkative, and knowledgeable on a wide range of topics spanning past simply astronomy. It was certainly refreshing, and it made me realize that I’d fallen victim to an unfortunate stereotype.
  • Real astronomy is done in data analysis. This is not what the public sees or imagines. I think that this is one of the great values of the program, particularly for students, but for teachers as well. Participating in research projects is always eye-opening and exciting, but it involves a great deal of hard work and creativity. This last aspect, creativity, is an area where scientists typically receive little credit, but it is where they truly excel. Science, including astronomy, seems like a stodgy and non-creative endeavor on the outside, particularly with the focus on STEM as separate from the arts, which are considered creative.
  • [student:] Although some of it was difficult to understand at times, being able to connect the dots and begin to paint a clear picture of what is happening was very important.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN