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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

  • [Qualities for an astronomer include] Passion, attention to detail,the ability to think things through and make plans and curiosity.
  • [student:] Sometimes it seems like in astronomy ‘oh, they've discovered all they need to discover,’ but it’s not even close. So NITARP has been encouraging in that I can pick a topic that might seem super specific, but I can still find a team of people that are willing to research that with me. That's awesome.
  • [student:] When we went to dinner last night, for about an hour, we couldn't stop talking about everything that we learned the day before, to the point where we had to say, ‘no more star talk.’ But we quickly violated that rule.
  • [student:] Before this experience, I did not know much about astronomers, and I had a very basic understanding of astronomy. This experience showed me that there are so many incredibly detailed and niche areas to study and research in the universe, and information gathered by one group can be used for entirely different purposes. I also learned that astronomy includes a lot of unknowns, guesswork, assumptions, and more questions than answers.
  • [The most surprising thing was] To see just how quickly the teachers and students involved in the project blossom in terms of their knowledge, skill and (most importantly to me) their confidence regarding both the science and the research process. It is a true joy to see all of the hard work put in over the prior months come to fruition. The group left the experience seeing themselves as researchers. That is an amazing and powerful transformation!

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN