• NASA
  • IPAC

Summer Visit - 2024 - StarChasers

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 StarChasers team came to visit in July 2024. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 12 students.

Quotes

  • [student:] I had no idea astronomers did so much coding. It makes a lot of sense when you're dealing with data sets with hundreds of thousands of points, but it was interesting that everyone at IPAC knows how to code.
  • [student:] The most important things I probably learned was how often we throw out data that we can't really do anything with. It took me a bit to internalize, but realizing the importance of being efficient sifting through usable/unusable data.
  • The learning was also enjoyable. As teachers, we’re always learning new techniques and strategies and educational stuff, but it’s rare to just be able to learn new content. It’s good to know the ol’ noggin still works (mostly).
  • It is hard work here. Kids are DONE by the end of the day.
  • [The best thing was] Watching my students get excited about astronomy and this research! As the week unfolded, my students became more independent and confident in what they were doing. Yay, science!

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2024 - StarChasers