Summer "Visit" - 2020 - Spider Team

Quotes

• [student: The most surprising thing was] Probably just learning that I could actually DO stuff. I was expecting that I'd be lost the whole time and not do any actual work but it was pretty easy for me to pick up on everything.
• [student: The best thing was] Being able to work with other people around the country and feeling the satisfaction of correctly working on data that I assumed I would not be able to understand.
• Astronomers have to be solid on the fundamentals of scientific theory and mathematical analysis. They must be curious about how we came to conclude that which we claim to know, and about what lies beyond the predicted patterns formed by theories. Astronomers must be clear, concise, and complete in communicating the why, what and how or what they are doing as it the collective that must be able to interpret, integrate and challenge their process and conclusions before new knowledge is accepted as true. This means that persistence is also a key quality of any scientist.
• [student:] The most important and interesting thing I did was looking at CMDs and CCDs for each cluster of IC417. This mini-project really revealed to me that the NS and its BPI14 cluster are special when looking at their excesses in comparison to their cluster neighbors. This step essentially proved to me, scientifically, that we are digging for treasure in the right place, and that was a cool thing to see materialize in front of me.
• [student:] I discovered that there was more math involved in the work than I assumed there to be.

Related Teams

• Spider/Rebull