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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

  • Real astronomy isn't just looking through telescopes with the naked eye anymore. It is really being accurate and precise and a lot of computer mathematics. I am glad I get to share this idea with students that this is what it is really like out there in the science and technology fields.
  • I always imagined astronomy as someone at the end of a telescope looking at the stars, but today's astronomer is at a computer controlling a telescope miles away on earth or in space. The data are collected in mass amounts and need lots of people to analyze it. The industry is drowning in data and not enough astronomers to use it.
  • This experience completely changed my views on astronomy. The biggest shock for me was when I found out that astronomer don't actually sit in an observatory and look out a telescope all day. It's gotten more complex then that now, but that image of a person in a white lab coat looking through a huge telescope was the image that used to pop into my head when I hear the word astronomy.
  • I think "real astronomy" is not simply about looking up at the sky and discovering new things, but having a passion for it and educating the public about what's really going on.
  • I was surprised at the variety of approaches we would take in trying to identify sources (particularly those with sparse data).

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - ColdSpotz