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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:] The most surprising part of this experience was how easily everyone connected with each other. We are all different, but we somehow were able to become good friends and team members in a short amount of time. This same connection happened between the students and the teachers. We did not view them as teachers, but rather friends that we can trust and exchange help with.
  • [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.
  • [The most surprising thing I learned was that] Science can legitimately be somewhat subjective. When we were trying to classify objects, we had limited data to make that classification from. In some cases, it was difficult to say “it’s an AGN” or “it’s a YSO,” especially if we were looking at an SED with only two data points on it. I’d always thought of science as having a right or wrong and didn’t give much thought to non-numerical uncertainty.
  • [student:] A good deal of the information was difficult to process despite relearning it each day. However, it was extremely rewarding when I finally did begin to understand—which was another thing that surprised me. *I* understood college-level astronomy.
  • [The best thing was] Making the human connections. From [the first night through the last], it was clear that we were on a human endeavor as much as a scientific one. I believe the kids came away understanding that science itself is a fundamentally human activity.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN