One of the great things about the Astronomy year abroad is that you get to go to the American Astronomical Society conference. This conference is held in a different place every year and is one of the largest astronomy conferences with lots of talks and events through the week. This year the conference was held in Hawaii so we got to spend just over a week in Honolulu! We were all excited to go, especially as the weather in Boston at the moment is pretty cold so some sunshine was much appreciated. The conference was a really great experience, with lots of talks in many different areas of astronomy as well as an exhibit hall with lots of astronomy freebies and display boards for poster presentations. We all had to present a poster on our research so far which was a cool experience. Fun as the conference was, we had even more fun when the conference was over and we got the chance to explore Hawaii. This mostly involved a LOT of time at the beach but also hiking in a volcano crater and hiring a car to see the rest of the island. It was a really great trip and definitely one of the highlights of this year abroad – now it’s time to settle back into the Boston snow and get my mid-year report written!
