It Takes One to Know One

21 Jun, 2026

Programs like Astronomy Camp matter because they bring together young people whose questions may shape the future of science and technology.

Curiosity in a Room of Thirty

Thirty students sat in a classroom at the University of Arizona discussing astronomy, data, and research. Outside, parents waited for the day's activities to conclude. Looking around the room, I found myself wondering what all thirty students had in common. The obvious answer was an interest in astronomy, yet that explanation felt incomplete. Plenty of students enjoy astronomy. What distinguished this group was a deeper curiosity, a willingness to research unanswered questions. Curiosity is difficult to measure and even harder to predict, but it may be the defining characteristic shared by future scientists.

My son was attending Astronomy Camp's Advanced Camp, a very selective summer program that enrolls roughly thirty students each year. The students are immersed in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and scientific research. They operate telescopes, analyze data, present findings, and work alongside peers who share an uncommon desire to understand how the universe works. Parents often ask where students from programs like this eventually attend college. The more interesting question, at least to me, is what they eventually become.

Looking around the room, I could not identify the future astronomer, professor, engineer, entrepreneur, or AI researcher. Yet one conclusion seemed surprisingly safe. Among those thirty students were individuals who will spend their careers creating knowledge rather than simply consuming it. The challenge is that nobody knows who they are. Human potential rarely reveals itself with enough clarity to make individual prediction easy.

Higher education has spent decades trying to identify talent. Admissions offices evaluate transcripts, test scores, essays, recommendations, portfolios, and interviews. Employers use assessments, internships, and performance reviews. Researchers study predictors of achievement ranging from intelligence and conscientiousness to family background and educational opportunity. Results are mixed. Many future high achievers do not appear exceptional during their teen years, while others display extraordinary promise and eventually choose entirely different paths. Human development remains stubbornly resistant to precise forecasting.

Yet statistical forecasting often succeeds where individual prediction fails. Suppose a cohort contains thirty highly motivated students selected for an intensive astronomy and research program. A significant majority will likely complete STEM degrees. Many will pursue graduate study, several may earn doctorates, and some will contribute to research, publish papers, design spacecraft, develop artificial intelligence systems, or teach the next generation of scientists. The identities remain uncertain, but the broader outcome is easier to anticipate.

Talent is easier to admire than curiosity because talent appears in test scores, awards, competitions, and résumés. Curiosity is quieter. It reveals itself in the student who stays after class to ask another question, spends an evening troubleshooting a telescope, or willingly analyzes data that may not produce the expected result. Talent helps explain where a student begins. Curiosity often determines how far that student travels.

The Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham, Arizona. Facilities such as this combine physics, engineering, computing, and data analysis to explore the universe, creating opportunities for future generations of scientists and researchers. Photograph by GreatInca, November 2006. Licensed under CC BY-SA. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

When Curiosity Clusters

Any estimate is speculative because Astronomy Camp does not publish long term alumni outcomes. Yet a cohort selected for an intensive research experience in astronomy and STEM is unlikely to resemble the general population. Looking around the room, I became less interested in identifying the future professor and more interested in estimating how many future researchers were already present.

Part of what makes the experience distinctive is its setting. Astronomy Camp was founded in 1988 by University of Arizona astronomer Don McCarthy, who recognized that scientific careers often begin with curiosity rather than credentials. Nearly four decades later, the program remains embedded within the ecosystem created by the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, one of the premier centers for astronomical research in the world. Steward astronomers have contributed to planetary missions, deep sky surveys, and major observatories for more than a century. Nearby, the Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab has produced some of the largest telescope mirrors ever built, including mirrors destined for observatories that will expand humanity's view of the universe in the coming decades.

Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. For more than a century, astronomers, educators, and students have gathered here to explore the universe and cultivate the curiosity that drives scientific discovery. Public domain. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Scientific communities depend on more than buildings, instruments, and research grants. They depend on people willing to invest in future generations long before achievements appear on a résumé. Programs such as Astronomy Camp create environments where curiosity is not unusual but expected, and where students discover peers who share the same fascination with questions that have no immediate answers.

Learning How Knowledge Is Made

Students in the Advanced Camp spend six nights living on Mount Lemmon in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. At more than 9,000 feet above sea level, the observatory complex offers dark skies that few Americans ever experience. The setting feels less like a summer camp and more like an active research station.

The observing program includes instruments ranging from the camp's own 12 inch and 32 inch telescopes to the University of Arizona's 61 inch Kuiper Telescope on nearby Mount Bigelow. Students also work with radio astronomy equipment and electronic imaging systems to conduct quantitative observing projects. Rather than simply viewing celestial objects, they learn how astronomers collect, calibrate, and analyze data.

The students seemed less interested in looking at the stars than in understanding them. Modern astronomy rarely involves looking through an eyepiece. Images are captured electronically using CCD cameras and processed through software that transforms photons into measurements. Students measure the brightness of stars, search for variability, analyze spectra, and learn how scientific conclusions emerge from data. Astronomy at this level resembles data science more than traditional stargazing.

The projects themselves are surprisingly sophisticated. Students may measure the changing brightness of variable stars, calculate the rotational periods of asteroids, analyze spectra to identify chemical composition, or study exoplanet transits by detecting tiny dips in starlight as planets pass in front of their host stars. Others may use radio telescopes to investigate sources of cosmic emission or compare observations collected over multiple nights to understand phenomena that evolve over time.

None of these activities are simulations. The data are real. The uncertainty is real. The process of transforming observations into knowledge is real. A surprising number of modern scientific careers begin with exactly these skills: asking questions, collecting evidence, quantifying uncertainty, and drawing conclusions from imperfect data.

Standing beneath the dome of the 61 inch Kuiper Telescope changes one's sense of scale. The instrument is not simply a larger version of a backyard telescope. Its massive mount tracks celestial objects with extraordinary precision as Earth rotates beneath it. Motors, computers, optics, detectors, and software work together to collect faint signals that have traveled across space for years, centuries, or even millions of years before reaching the telescope.

Every major telescope represents the combined efforts of astronomers, physicists, engineers, software developers, instrument specialists, and data analysts. Programs such as Astronomy Camp remind us that scientific infrastructure includes more than observatories and instruments. It also includes the people who spend decades cultivating the next generation.

The 61 inch Kuiper Telescope on Mount Bigelow. Instruments such as this help students move beyond observing the night sky to understanding how scientific knowledge is created. Photograph by Pascal Yglesias, June 2026.

From Telescopes to the Workforce

A professional life revolves around forecasting. Colleges forecast enrollment. Governments forecast population growth. Businesses forecast demand. Increasingly, artificial intelligence systems forecast human behavior. Most forecasting does not attempt to identify specific winners. Instead, it estimates distributions and probabilities. It tells us how many students may enroll, not which specific student will submit a deposit tomorrow. It estimates how many individuals may complete a degree, not which individual will struggle during the second semester.

The same principle applies to talent and curiosity. Standing outside that classroom, I realized I could not identify the future Ph.D. candidates among the students. Yet I felt reasonably confident that several were present. That observation highlights something important about educational institutions. Schools often focus on individual achievement because individual stories are compelling. Research universities, laboratories, and innovative companies depend on something larger. They depend on communities that bring motivated people together and allow them to learn from one another.

Scientific progress rarely emerges from isolated geniuses. More often, it emerges from communities of capable people who challenge, encourage, and inspire one another over many years.

For many years, discussions about astronomy careers focused on a familiar concern: too many Ph.D. graduates competing for too few tenure track faculty positions. Viewed more broadly, however, the question changes.

The scientific workforce of 2026 looks very different from the one that existed when Astronomy Camp was founded in 1988. Commercial launch providers, satellite operators, Earth observation companies, defense contractors, national laboratories, artificial intelligence firms, and advanced manufacturing companies now employ large numbers of individuals with skills that closely resemble those developed through astronomical research.

Astronomy occupies a unique position among the sciences because it naturally combines physics, mathematics, engineering, software, instrumentation, statistics, and data analysis. Students learn how to collect imperfect data, quantify uncertainty, test competing explanations, and extract meaningful patterns from large datasets. In many respects, astronomy became a data science discipline long before the phrase entered common use.

That reality suggests a different way of thinking about programs such as Astronomy Camp. Their contribution is not limited to producing future astronomers. They help develop the broader scientific workforce that increasingly underpins economic growth, technological innovation, and national competitiveness. The future scientist standing in that classroom may not become an astronomer. One may design spacecraft. Another may build artificial intelligence systems. Another may develop instruments for a future observatory, lunar mission, or planetary probe. The telescope is the beginning of the story, not necessarily the destination.

Looking around the room, I realized that the future was not defined by what those students already knew. It was defined by how many questions they still wanted answered. Talent undoubtedly matters, but curiosity may matter more because it continues to grow long after any test score, competition result, or résumé line has been forgotten.

Following the Astronomy Camp Advanced Camp graduation ceremony at the University of Arizona, Elmer Yglesias enjoys a Tucson tradition while celebrating Father’s Day and a summer of scientific curiosity and exploration. June 2026. Photograph by Pascal Yglesias.

Further Reading

• Astronomy Camp Main Website
• Astronomy & Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona
• Best Tacos: BOCA by Chef Maria Mazon

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