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Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN

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 HIPS-AGaiN team came to visit in July 2025. The 4 core team educators attended, plus 6 students.

Quotes

  • I feel like one of the most surprising things I learned was how much we don’t know about the universe, but also how far we can get by relying on the laws of physics. I liked learning how to talk about AGNs in a way that left room for ambiguity. For instance, how we are using the dusty torus model for reverberation mapping, but with the acknowledgement that it might not be viewing angle or attenuation by the dusty torus that is preventing us from seeing the blue bump in type 2 AGNs. I like acknowledging and navigating those unknowns—it makes me really excited!
  • I was blown away by the scale and extent of what astronomers do as part of their research. The amount of data is mind-blowing and the amount of work that astronomers have to do to get the data that they need out of all of this data is just crazy. There are so many things to discover in the data, but you really need to have a plan if you want to discover anything.
  • I didn’t realize how important writing was to astronomy. It made me really happy, because I was a writer before I entered the astronomy field. It made me feel like my path suddenly made sense.
  • [student:] I knew going into the project that it involved aspects of science that I intensely enjoyed, and it did not disappoint in the slightest.
  • Shared, in-person, experiences lead to strong groups and strong groups lead to great results. I feel connected to my group on such a higher level now.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN