An astronomer at the BOTTOM OF THE WORLD

There’s genuinely not a lot I’d change if I could do my mission to Antarctica again. The science I went there to do went as well as I hoped it would and I made it back without losing any body parts to frostbite. The only real regret I have is that I didn’t pack a pair of jeans; somehow this most inane of oversights managed to cause me a not-insignificant amount of frustration that only grew as the weeks ticked on by.

I began my jeans-less journey in Great Malvern, Worcestershire on 17 November 2021. Four trains, five planes, two quarantines and 31 days later I arrived at Concordia Station on Dome C in Antarctica, where I would be working for the next seven weeks as part of the Antarctic Search for Transiting Exoplanets (aka ASTEP) telescope summer team.

Goodbye to sunsets

The group I travelled with, mostly glaciologists and seismologists, were all