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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

  • [student:] [Real astronomy] is to find the mysteries of the Universe, and to solve the myriad problems that are there, and to solve them. I did it, and it was everything because on this visit we did a lot of work on Excel and it was just pure scientific research.
  • The best thing about the trip for me was watching how much my students' learning had evolved over time. So much of what we have done so far had a really steep learning curve, and it was really great to see them communicate the details of our project at the end of the Caltech visit.
  • I spend a fair amount of time, just looking, enjoying, and observing the night sky. I have always thought that professionals somehow "use" the data that is generated by the bigger telescopes but our project has really given me a glimpse into the process, and how complicated that process can be. I can say that my respect for the professionals has increased quite a bit, especially given how hard a seemingly simple question can be to answer.
  • The best thing about the trip was having some of the incredible knowledge of all of these amazing astronomers rub off on me.
  • 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