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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

  • [qualities important for an astronomer are] Resilience and being comfortable in not knowing. That has got to be so frustrating. And strangely rewarding at the same time.
  • 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 challenging aspect was navigating the various websites that we used to construct our data. It was frustrating sometimes because we were all learning and trying to figure out which button to press, whether this graph was correct or not, or which steps I am missing.
  • [student:] I think the most important part was also being able to see the growth and change in myself as I became a more passionate learner.
  • [student:] Real astronomy is time consuming. It is sleepiness and long periods of looking at computer screens. It is not knowing if you are doing anything the right way.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP