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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

  • The major thing [I learned] is that astronomers or any scientist all have moments of feeling "stupid" and you should push through it. Also you do not need to have astronomy backgrounds to work in the career field if you are a coder for example.
  • It was surprising to learn how much programming and data analysis are currently dominating the astronomy field. It seems like today’s astronomy is primarily data analysis, no one is actually looking at any stars. I get it, because we’ve pretty much exhausted the visual part of the spectrum, but I had never really thought about it before.
  • [The qualities you need to be an astronomer include] The understanding of how the details you pay attention to makes you an expert in a small part that fits into a bigger picture. No one is an expert in every aspect of the whole field of astronomy! It is collaborative, so working on a team is of utmost importance.
  • [student:] Real astronomy is having confidence in the steps you took and the work you achieved using those steps but also being willing to receive feedback and critism. It's also curiosity.
  • The major two qualities [for being an astronomer] are passion for learning and conquering the fear of not understanding content and learning to code.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490