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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:] I didn't realize astronomy was so much coding and tech. It makes sense now that I have experienced it, but for some reason I thought it would be a lot more looking at pictures.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • [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.
  • [student:] Determination/resilience are qualities that I believe are very important to be an astronomer.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490