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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

  • [student:] The most surprising thing to me was how collaborative it was and how equal I felt. During the zoom meetings, I had felt more like an observer than a participant. However, during this week, we were all in it together, learning, asking questions, sometimes struggling. As a student, I felt like a true member in the group, participating in all things just as the students and the other teachers did. I was also surprised by how collaborative astronomy can be. Collaborating and engaging in tasks as a group allowed me to truly gain a better understanding of what we were doing. I was also surprised by the amount of complex math and coding Luisa did to create our SEDs, plots, etc. I (naively) didn’t realize how much math was involved in Astronomy. Additionally, I was surprised by how much fun I had and how much I laughed. I expected it to be a very serious trip. We were very focused and got a lot of work done, but we also had a ton of fun and made lots of jokes along the way, which I wasn’t expecting. I was also a little surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I didn’t really know what to expect going into this week, but I had an amazing time. Actually starting to analyze our YSO candidates was SO COOL. I kept getting super excited every time I was able to apply what we learned in concept these past few months, or even that morning, into practice as I analyzed SEDs, images, plots, and light curve data.
  • [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.
  • [The least surprising thing was] Everyone who works at Caltech does a ton of work and works really hard. And astrophysics is hard - the concepts, the analysis. It’s all difficult and requires a lot of time, thought, and energy.
  • [student:] Overall it was interactive and more collaborative than what I think of when someone said scientific research.
  • [student:] I was told it's okay to fail, as most or all of learning is failing and accepting help from others, which I used to not believe entirely but this experience was definitely impactful.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490