Astronomers travel to ground-based observatories (for example, southwestern U.S., Hawaii, Chile, Australia), facilites that operate space-based observatories, and conferences, held in locations across the globe.

Hi Aaron, When I was in graduate school I traveled to Alaska in winter to observe the northern lights and analyze data from the FAST satellite data at the Poker Flat Research Range. Scientists, like my boss, who do sounding rocket experiments often travel to Alaska for work. I've been to conferences in a lot of different places, including Japan, Finland, France, and the United Kingdom. Of course, scientists also take vacations too! Last fall, I managed to find the time to take a vacation to Italy. Kris P.S. - you have the same first name and initial as one of our graduate students!

Hi Aaron;

and I'll add that you have the same firstname/last initial as one of my colleagues! Scientists are often lucky to be able to travel to a wide variety of places for work, between observatories, attending meetings and workshops, committee meetings (groan!), and simply going to visit other scientists to work for a few days, weeks, or months. With two young children, I have actually not been traveling as much as I did before, and I'll say honestly that sometimes the scientists are working so hard when "on travel" that it becomes difficult to enjoy some of the fantastic places we get to go! We try often to limit our travel when not necessary due to pollution, cost, etc. Yet I have been to workshops in wonderful, beautiful places -- and all I got to see was a meeting room and a whole bunch of computers. Still, on the occaision when the travel is to an interesting place and you can get a little bit of time to explore, it is a wonderful benefit of this kind of work.

Hello Aaron I don't travel to particular observatories, but I do travel to meetings. In recent years, I have been to Sicily and California and currently I am actually working in Japan. I am here working on a new satelitte that we launched back in September Dawn