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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:] This experience made me realize that astronomy is much more data driven than I would have previously thought. Also, there’s a fair bit of automation in the data sorting, without which I don’t think much would get done.
  • [student:] I think that real astronomy is not just looking at different things in space, but actually researching different things using math and coding. I did not realize how much math and coding that goes on for scientific research and how that whole process goes.
  • The best thing, as always, was working and playing with such great people: the other teachers, their students, my students, and you professional astronomers. It made it so much more enjoyable than just sitting at a screen all day, even a screen full of stars.
  • 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).
  • [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