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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:] I was surprised about how our procedure veered off from its original course[...]
  • [student:] The best part of the trip was the people who made it into something so special. I don’t think I’ve ever quite met a group of people like that who I just completely clicked with like that. Being able to explore California, learn and expand my knowledge of space, hash out a ton of numbers over Microsoft Excel, and make memories to last with people who were complete strangers two weeks before was an opportunity that most don’t get to have, and I’m very fortunate to have been able to do. It was truly spectacular. Also, being able to interact and work with like-minded nerds was awesome. It was definitely refreshing to be put into a setting where everyone in the room cared.
  • [student:] The best thing about the trip was being able to be treated like a colleague rather than a student.
  • [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.
  • 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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN