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Summer Visit - 2012 - ColdSpotz

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 Cold Spotz team came to visit in June 2012. The core team educators plus 8 students attended.


Quotes

  • [student:] I thought that the most surprising thing we did was doing things that we did not learn before we went to Caltech. Before we went I thought we were very well prepared and covered everything, but there was some stuff like looking at other telescopes that we didn't do before.
  • The best thing about the trip was the entire experience. Working with a professional astronomer and learning completely new things was amazing.
  • [student:] The best thing about the trip was being able to expand my knowledge about space and because of that being able to narrow down on a career.
  • Before I found out about how real astronomers work, I thought that as part of the research, we would have an hour or so where we would sit at a telescope and look for objects.
  • The best thing about this trip was watching the confidence level rise in each participant. [..] By the end of the week, my two students felt so much more confident in their Excel abilities that they were helping others write formulas to make calculations easier. It was also exhilarating to witness [the other] teachers gain faith in their understanding of the project, as well.

Summer Visit - 2012 - ColdSpotz