• NASA
  • IPAC

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

  • [student:] I think [we did] scientific research because we are using the data to make graphs.
  • [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.
  • [student:] All the scientists we talked to, even briefly, were well versed in their areas of study and their passion for their work was inspiring to someone who is considering pursuing science later in life.
  • The most surprising thing I learned was how astronomy works. I had assumed that it was all about doing large amount of complex mathematics and other number crunching. This trip gave me the impression that a far more wide array of skills and people are required.
  • The most interesting thing I did was organize data and actually understand what it meant.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - HR4AGN