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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!
  • We also passed Kip Thorne on the sidewalk—I didn’t really know who he was, but it was neat to feel validated in our right to take up space at Caltech because we are contributing to real research.
  • I was blown away by the scale of everything. The data sets are huge, the scale of NASA’s mission, - everything was bigger and better that I expected and I expected a lot.
  • [student:] I love science in general, but this program has rekindled the part of my personality that always loves to learn and is curious about everything.
  • [Qualities for an astronomer include] Passion, attention to detail,the ability to think things through and make plans and curiosity.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2025 - HIPS-AGaiN