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Summer Visit - 2022 - fIRes

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 fIRes team came to visit in July 2022. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 9 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] The most surprising thing I saw and didn't know was the sheer amount of data these telescopes gather. There were billions of sources with multiple different types of information gathered on each source.
  • Though I've been teaching and preaching [the scientific method] for years, this is really the first time I've honestly done it (with A LOT of help and guidance, of course).
  • [student:] An astronomer requires a large work ethic. The thing about space is that not all questions have an answer. You have to work towards a finish line that you can't see and that may not even be there. Perseverance is a huge part of it too!
  • I realized going into this that astronomy probably did not mean working with full-color Hubble images all day, every day. What I didn't realize, however, is the amount and type of data involved. There's a lot! And looking through all of it can be a bit tedious. Fortunately, computers make our work soooo much easier.
  • Astronomers must have a strong work ethic and be able to persevere through challenges. Astronomers must develop creative solutions to problems and be able to ask questions, including questions that arise as they work through data. They must be good at distinguishing patterns.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2022 - fIRes