• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer Visit - 2023 - AGNatha

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 AGNatha team came to visit in June 2023. The 5 core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] I learned that the type of research that astronomers do is not my forte which is very beneficial because as a rising senior [I need to know what I don't want]
  • This has really illuminated for me the "nebulous"ness of research, as in we really didn't know what we would find in the data until we dug in, and what we found then began guiding and shaping the new questions we wanted to answer.
  • What we worked on does feel like real astronomy, even without the complex math. I can see parallels between what we worked and some of the published papers we have reviewed. I did not anticipate how much could be done with data that is just available to work with. In chemistry you basically need to create your own data to then evaluate, feels like astronomy the data is there and the task is figuring out how to use it.
  • It was really challenging work to do myself, not to mention helping my 2 students learn how to do the work as well. We really needed time to work together in person, especially when using topcat. We needed time and space to discuss the project and really deeply understand what our goal was. I also feel like we really bonded through this process - both teachers and students.
  • [Qualities of an astronomer are:] Patience, perseverance, passion, adaptability, flexibility

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2023 - AGNatha