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Summer Visit - 2012 - UBOKO

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 UBOKO team came to visit in August 2012. The core team educators attended, plus 10 students.

 

Quotes

  • It was very rewarding to be able to talk with astronomers who were willing to answer my (many) questions. Educators rarely have an opportunity to talk to professionals to hone their knowledge base once they finish school. I'm afraid I grabbed them every chance I got!
  • The most interesting moment to me was looking through the images of possible planetary nebula nuclei and actually finding one. The moment that the page loaded and the image came up, my partner and I exclaimed, "Whoa!" It was interesting to look at and a great experience.
  • This experience made me realize that sitting in a room for several hours doing research did not necessarily have to feel like work. This improved my opinion of astronomy even further by making me realize just how much I enjoyed it.
  • I didn't really think of astronomy as having a deep basis in research until this trip. It was interesting to see this new side of astronomy.
  • Astronomers used to spend a lot of time looking through telescopes, and that is not the case anymore. It is a lot easier to get data these days (no more sitting on a platform keeping a guide star centered anymore), but there isn't as much connection to the sky. It is important for students to understand this.

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Summer Visit - 2012 - UBOKO