• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490

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 SNAG490 team came to visit in June-July 2022. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 5 students.

Quotes

  • The best thing is being able to work in a group in person to see the level of detail on the topics. You have the ability to interact more freely. Plus you can build team dynamics during and after the day.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing I did was enjoy myself. I didn't expect to feel happy while working (that sounds bad), but I expected to just be really stressed. It was stressful, but also extremely rewarding. On the last day I still felt like I had energy left for a couple more in-person all-day work days.
  • I think in order to be an astronomer you have to be smart, hard working, and really like data. You also need to know computer programming. And, based on what everyone on that Zoom call said, you need to be good at working on a team. There is more teamwork than I would have guessed.
  • Well, it seems like “real astronomy” is analyzing data. Making the satellites and rovers is really more engineering, which I guess I did not realize. I guess I expected to analyze data, but I had no idea how we would do that. So learning all about how to read SEDs and CCDs/CMDs etc. is something I did not realize I would be doing, but it is because before this I did not know SEDs existed.
  • [student:] Overall it was interactive and more collaborative than what I think of when someone said scientific research.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490