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Summer Visit - 2017 - CephC:LABS

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 CephC-LABS team came to visit in June 2017. The core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • Astronomy is always depicted as a single person looking through a telescope. I was aware that modern astronomy is collecting and analyzing data, but I did not have a clear understanding of the massive amount of data available and the steps required to reduce it in order to make an analysis. I was also unaware that astronomy is very collaborative.
  • Real astronomy is looking at data, analyzing data, and drawing conclusions. Real astronomers collaborate with other astronomers to verify their findings. Everything we did on this trip was scientific research; looking at data, analyzing data using different tools, collaboration, and drawing conclusions.
  • [student:] I've always thought that astronomy involved looking through telescopes in some manner, and was almost completely blindsided when we spent all of our time in front of a computer. I was pleasantly surprised!!
  • [student: Astronomers] do so much critical thinking and have to use their own individual judgement. I wouldn't have imagined that so many different astronomers could get differing answers and still all be technically correct.
  • [student:] It would be infuriatingly difficult to try to learn how to do aperture photometry over the internet. It could be done, but it wouldn't be as fun or productive.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2017 - CephC:LABS