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Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL

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 IDYL team came to visit in July-August 2019. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • I appreciate knowing that astronomers celebrate their “geekiness” and their families. I believe that point alone squelches many preconceived notions. Not only did it change how I understand astronomers but how others understand astronomers. The look on people’s faces when I talk about the Caltech astronomer and how *she* is guiding us through the research process, is extremely telling. I think it is easy to point the finger at others when they profile astronomers as “old white guys in lab coats” but I am afraid I may have also held that misinformed preconceived notion.
  • This week changed the way I think about astronomy quite a bit and that's sorta what I wanted out of the program when I applied. I'm used to teaching intro astronomy from a textbook and using a lot of simulations as lab activities, but rarely using real data (even in canned activities). My experience [...] a few years back gave me a taste of astronomy research. That is, I got the chance to see data being gathered [...] However, that was where the experience ended. I did not have the opportunity to see how the data was processed or turned eventually into a research paper. This NITARP experience has been a nice complement to my [past] experience and may be a stepping stone for me to do additional research in pursuit of an advanced degree.
  • I knew that there would be a lot of work to do going in to this week so I guess that is what was least surprising for me. I have been looking forward to this for a long time and I absolutely loved learning the specific math and physics behind what we are doing in our project. It makes me want to take more classes in astrophysics!
  • [student:] I was surprised at how excited I got when we finally came up with our first list of new YSO candidates. There was this electricity in the air and everyone felt very excited and relieved. I was also surprised at how fast the days went. Time seemed to fly by when we were working together.
  • [student:] The work we did was intense, and I would be lying if I said I did not get confused more times than I would like to admit. However, being a part of a group was very helpful and I felt like we were a pretty good team. We helped each other figure it out.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2019 - IDYL