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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

  • The passion astronomers have toward the subject is contagious.
  • The most surprising thing [was that] I realized that the work that most of the astronomers do can be done by civilians who have the knowledge and know how to access data on the internet. It's fascinating that the internet offers such a rich database that most people don't know about.
  • [My advice to future participants is that] you will pick [up] the information faster than you think and before you know it you'll be talking like a scientist on the subject.
  • [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 most interesting thing I did was organize data and actually understand what it meant.

Related Teams

Summer Visit - 2012 - HR4AGN