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Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP

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 SCHARP team came to visit in June 2023. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

Quotes

  • The least surprising thing [I learned] was the dedication and brilliance of those involved in astronomy research. I realize what a special group of people they really are to understand and persevere with their work.
  • [student:] I always thought astronomy was looking through telescopes, collecting data, and mapping stars. I never expected it to be creating graphs and doing math for them. I always knew you had to be really bright but I always thought you generally knew what you were looking at. I never thought you would be discovering worlds and stars that have never been looked at before and have to learn along the way.
  • I'm most surprised at how quickly we accomplished so many things.
  • I think [this experience] helped me realize and experience how much work [astronomers] do and how many different tools get used. I liked experiencing the "huh, that's weird" moment when we found something neat.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing that I learned was how much more there is to astronomy than meets the eye. You are not just looking at stars through a telescope. You are graphing data, and doing math to better understand what you are looking at.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP