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Summer Visit - 2012 - HR4AGN

The summer visit to Caltech is 3-4 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 HR4AGN team came to visit in August 2012. The core team educators attended, plus 12 students, and one additional scientist.  The scientist mentor is Dr. Varoujan Gorjian. IPAC staff member Jacob Llamas (SSC) assisted, as did Dr. Jean-Christophe Mauduit (SSC).

Quotes

  • My only impression of astronomers before this were essentially people in lab coats in a white lab looking at images from a large telescope, but that perception has changed greatly.
  • [It was not surprising to me that] the process of research and collaboration is not so easy; we are working through null results and that there can be times where it doesn't seem if there's any progress made, but we keep on trucking through the data anyway.
  • [student:] The most surprising thing I learned was that Astronomers do not have to individually process all of the data they are interested in from raw data. I was unaware of the existence and availability of the various databases that exist.
  • The passion astronomers have toward the subject is contagious.
  • More gets done in this week than in all the rest of the prior time leading up to the trip.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - HR4AGN