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Summer Visit - 2017 - SIRXS-DEEP

The summer visit to Caltech is 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 SIRXS-DEEP team came to visit in June 2017. The core team educators attended, plus 8 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] After this trip, I really do look at astronomy differently. Before I honestly did not think it was this complex and interesting. I know now that it takes a lot of time and knowledge to be a good astronomers.
  • [student:] The least surprising was that the work was going to be hard, intense, and brutal. But I liked it very much anyway. I knew it would be hard but it is still rough when you have to think so hard and long in the middle of summer.
  • I love the connections and sharing that happen between teachers, students, and mentors. This is the part that I believe makes a successful PD or E/PO project very successful – the interactions and networks that are formed between participants at all levels. It builds a working comfort level and common ground that helps drive and support further collaboration and communication.
  • [student: Qualities for an astronomer are] Curiosity and persistence- curiosity is important because it drives research and learning and persistence is important because doing research may not initially yield what you are looking for, but it's important to persist.
  • This experience has changed the way I think about astronomers and astronomy. I know I had an idea of the fact that astronomers used light of various wavelengths and didn't really use as much visible light. This has really brought that home to me and has opened my eyes to just how much data is out there yet to be examined.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2017 - SIRXS-DEEP