• 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

  • 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.
  • The major two qualities [for being an astronomer] are passion for learning and conquering the fear of not understanding content and learning to code.
  • 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.
  • [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.
  • [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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - SNAG490