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Summer Visit - 2019 - Dust Mights

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 Dust Mights team came to visit in July 2019. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • Astronomy has always been about aggregating and parsing massive tables of data. So in a way, teaching us to do astronomy with data is just as primal as, and far richer than, anything we teach as “astronomy” in K-12 school (earth science can include some basics, and so can physics).
  • [student:] Astronomy is such an interesting field, and the people that are interested in it are always devoted and incredibly kind.
  • [student:] The thing that surprised me most was how clear the picture was afterwards. I went into this barely even understanding what we were trying to do, and now I'm feeling confident in my knowledge of almost everything we talked about. It was super satisfying to just have everything click into place.
  • [student:] The best thing, in my opinion, about the trip would be going out of my comfort zone and meeting new people in a new place. I definitely have made lots of friends and have learned to expand my horizons and push myself to do things I might not want to do. That has helped me learn a lot about the world and people around me and has forced me to grow up a little bit.
  • [student:] The best part of the trip was just the full experience that it brought. Getting to sit in a room and feel like I was contributing something to humanity's knowledge was just so unique.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - Dust Mights