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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

  • Real astronomy is making sense of data, asking questions, and trying to develop an approach answering those questions. Everything we did on this visit was scientific research. We asked questions, looked at data, asked more questions, compared existing information to visual data, and made plenty of mistakes and had to start over.
  • [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.
  • [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.
  • [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.
  • [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.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - SCHARP