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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

  • The fact that we were doing REAL science, we were working with real data, from real telescopes, looking for tangible objects in space. As much as I like working with theories and in the theoretical, it was fantastic to be able to make real scientific headway in the physics world.
  • While a lot of astronomy is done by computer, nothing compares to having a human look over the data. [..] This is a really good reminder to students who blindly accept what the calculator/computer spits out without checking to see if the answer makes sense.
  • I was surprised to see the amount of work was needed for a seemingly small job. To have stayed for such a short amount of time and to have done so much work [..] was overwhelming.
  • Probably the most surprising thing that I learned was how much focus you have to have to accomplish work like we were doing. Although I knew beforehand that it was a lot of time and effort, it was interesting to see that doing the work takes time, patience, and a good amount of focus.
  • Never had I imagined myself working with students, teachers, and actual scientists from all across the country and globe. I learned just as much culturally as I did technically.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - C-WAYS