• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA

Our regular summer visit to Caltech was hijacked by COVID-19. So we did an online work week instead -- 4 days when all the participants on the team come together to work intensively on the data. Reload to see a different set of quotes.

OIRMA worked July 5-9, 2020. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] An astronomer must be patient, curious, and willing to learn. They also must not be afraid to take risks, to embarrass themselves, and to ask questions. They have to be content with sometimes admitting that they made a mistake or were wrong about something, and that it’s okay to not know everything.
  • [student:] I realized that good astronomers admit their lack of perfect knowledge and remain curious to strengthen their own intuition and identify new issues.
  • Working with a highly expert mentor astronomer is crucial. (this is not a surprise, but just got reinforced!) On day 3 it turned out that we had WAY fewer AGN to work with than expected. I was scared that our science was in trouble. Varoujan came back morning of day 4 with an alternate approach to developing a catalog that opened things up again.
  • The best thing about the week was being able to contribute to a real project where we don’t know the answer. [...] It was refreshing to have the chance to explore and analyze.
  • The program has been transformational for me professionally.

Related Teams

Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA