• NASA
  • IPAC

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 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:] I think the two most important qualities in any astronomer are hard work and passion. Hard work is necessary in constantly building the knowledge base required to succeed, and passion is necessary in providing the intrinsic motivation required to succeed.
  • [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:] Don’t be afraid to ask an ungodly amount of questions. And don’t be afraid to be wrong. I certainly was at first—like, pretty much all the time—but when I finally stopped worrying about it so much, I found I had all this extra room in my brain that I could devote entirely to learning why I was wrong, and how to be less wrong (because no one is ever really right—that’s just not how astronomy works).
  • [student: This experience changed the way I thought about astronomy and astronomers because] I've interned with astronomers before and thought that the norm was a small workplace of 10-20 people all doing research at about the same level. Here, I got to see the varied specializations people had in just this one building -- different types of engineers, people organizing the data, managing the data, professors, etc. in addition to astronomers mainly doing research. I didn't know anything about how research was done (in terms of proposals and funding and etc.) before this trip. I really, really liked having the astronomers come in to talk about their lives and their jobs. They were candid and personal, which resulted in a very refreshing and in-depth talk!

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2016 - HIPS AGN