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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

  • [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.
  • Qualities that are important to be an astronomer are perseverance and a willingness to learn from mistakes. Astronomers also have to be effective communicators in order to discuss their findings.
  • [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 loved astronomy prior to the trip but I have even more interest in it now that I’ve gotten to do some actual work in the area.
  • [student:] The least surprising thing I learned was that even scientists feel stupid sometimes. I feel like that makes a lot of sense and makes me feel a little better about how I feel when trying to do research.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP