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Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 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 C-WAYS team came to visit in July 2012. The core team educators attended, plus 12 students, and two additional scientists.  Dr. JD Armstrong (LCOGT/UH) and Dr. Babar Ali (IPAC) also assissted.

Quotes

  • I was surprised by the sheer number of young stellar objects we were capable of studying in such a small patch of sky. There is so much more to discover that we haven't even looked at yet.
  • One evening, while working on some homework, I had the realization that THIS WAS REAL. There is no right answer, in fact, no one knows the answer. I can't just go and ask someone the answer. It was like a light bulb went off and I experienced a feeling of excitement and also felt a little bit scared. I thought to myself -- Is this how astronomers feel about their work? It was a great feeling and exciting that I too am part of this now.
  • Probably the most interesting thing I learned was that astronomers are more detectives piecing the universe together. Since we cannot actually see the life cycle of a star, we are forced to look at stars in different points in their (unfathomably long) lives and match them up in sequential order. Most importantly, "real science" is nothing like "textbook science" where we have explicit directions and there is a definite right or wrong answer. In the real world of science, we have to trust ourselves that we have done our best to reach the answer we deem correct.
  • We did real science!
  • [The best thing was] Watching the students interact with each other and with the science. It was great to see kids from different schools working with each other. It was also really great to see the students embracing the science. They asked our astronomers thoughtful questions that showed they were thinking about the process and the science.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS