Week 10
This week started out with a presentation at NASA’s conference for summer interns. I modified my presentation
from Friday and got to present my research to my coworkers, family, and friends! It was so cool to finally
show off the work that I’ve been doing this summer! Since it was mostly a repeat of my presentation on Friday,
I didn’t have to go through as much rigorous preparation, which was nice.
After my presentation, I tried one last time to fix the Swift data. I had messed up the extractions by
choosing a bad source and background region, so I redid the extractions from every year after choosing new
regions. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to do much, so we need to reach out to the Swift experts again and
ask them to help us with the extractions.
After I had finished my last attempt at the Swift extractions, I had to prepare to return my computer.
It took me a while to get all my data off the laptop because it wouldn’t copy to my flash drive very
quickly at all (it ended up taking almost 24 hours!). Once I had my data and Jupyter notebooks saved and
safely stored on my personal laptop, I had to shut down my NASA computer one last time.
Goodbye computer :(
Fortunately, my mentor is letting me continue with my project into the fall! We’re going to work on cleaning up the Swift data, including the NICER telescope in our cross-calibration analysis, and writing a paper including all this data. I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with my mentor and this amazing project into the fall!I also got invited to continue participating in Goddard’s LGBT advisory committee social hours, which I’m very excited about! The people in the LGBT AC were some of the nicest people that I met at NASA, and I’m so glad that I have a way to keep in touch with them!
NASA pride!
I’m happy that between my connections with people that I met at NASA and the research that I’m continuing with, I get to feel like I’m still a part of the NASA community! I’m looking forward to hopefully getting another internship with Goddard next summer and maybe getting to work on campus!
Thank you so much for reading :)