Summer "Visit" - 2020 - OIRMA

Quotes

• [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.
• It was very interesting that we had to immediately pivot our plans. It doesn’t get more authentic than when Plan A didn’t work, and as a team we had to talk out our next steps on how to find applicable data. It has also been very interesting to see how that develops as we all branch into our own pieces of the research, and how that dialogue continues.
• [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.
• I’m certain that I would not have been able to get the work needed done without the help of the group, teachers and students equally.

Related Teams

• OIRMA/Gorjian