My name is Charlotte, and I am a fourth-year MPhys Astrophysics student currently spending my final year conducting research at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Boston, Massachusetts. I am currently halfway through but I have already done so much! This blog is a very quick summary of what I have been up to.
I arrived in Boston at the end of August and I was surprised by how hot it was! Luckily the weather quickly began to cool down making it easier to get out and about in the city. Boston is a beautiful place, it feels very European as it is very walkable and the architecture and the roads are much smaller and more intricate than in other American cities. The Freedom Trail was one of the first things I did, where a small brick path in the pavement leads you to all the historical locations around the city. As Boston is one of the oldest cities in the US, there is a rich history to see and experience, including the Bunker Hill monument, USS Constitution, MIT, and of course the famous Boston Cop Slide!
I also spent time exploring the various Harvard campuses, where I would be studying this year. The photo below shows me standing on the steps of the Widener Library, the main Harvard library. I have definitely made the most of being a Harvard student, as you get free entry into many of the museums around the city. I would also recommend getting a library card from the Boston Public Library, as anything your Harvard/Smithsonian card doesn’t work for, the library card normally does! Some highlights were the Harvard Natural History Museum, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
Myself and two other Southampton students, along with our friend from Southampton who was visiting, took the coach to New York for a weekend which is only four hours away and we managed to see most of the sights over our short time there! Make sure to bring your Smithsonian card for free entry into Smithsonian museums!
I am currently spending most of my time at the CfA where I am completing my full-time research project for my master’s year. I am working in a group called GLAD (Gravitational Lensing for Astrometric Determinations) where I am using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing to zoom into distant black holes to investigate their structure. Most of my time is spent working on my code and running simulations for the project. I also meet with my supervisors once a week (sometimes more) to discuss the research and explore new ideas.
The CfA is a fantastic place to work, almost every day there is a talk/seminar on a different topic that are open to everyone, often providing sandwiches! I am biased, but I would definitely say this is the best place in the world to work to be at the forefront of everything astrophysics. Everyone person I have met and spoken to are working on incredibly interesting and cutting-edge projects. The CfA is the home of the Chandra X-Ray Center, which is the telescope I am using in my research and is one of NASA’s great telescopes. They also have members in many collaborations across the world including the Event Horizon Telescope, which produced the first image of a black hole!
New England is famous for its fall and I can confirm that it did not disappoint. In and around Boston the trees were absolutely stunning, and the crisp, still weather was perfect for going exploring. I visited Alewife Wetlands, Lexington, and the Middlesex Fells which are all a short walk/cycle from the house. My parents came to visit in mid-October, bringing with them a hire car! We went to the Berkshires for the night, which is right out in the forest and I have never seen colours like it! On the way, we stopped at Concord, where Little Women was set and written, and in Shelburne Falls, a beautiful town with a waterfall and the Bridge of Flowers, which was used to film some of The Holdovers.
We also held a Friendsgiving with some of the other students and post-docs at the CfA who were away from their families for the Thanksgiving holiday. This was a lovely way to celebrate together with people from all over the world, we each cooked a dish from our respective home countries making for a brilliant spread of food!
I recently returned from the 247th American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, where I spent a week attending talks and discussing my research at one of the largest gatherings of astronomers in the world. I had so much fun learning about other people’s work and hearing about some of the biggest topics in astronomy today such as the Hubble tension, and the hunt for exoplanets. I presented a poster which allowed me to meet and talk to like-minded people about where to go with my project and how it links to the wider field.
I had an afternoon off while at AAS so I went further out of the city to explore the desert surroundings. The photos below show some of the cool sites and plants I found.
For the rest of my year I will continue the research I have started, getting ready to write my thesis and prepare for my viva at the end of the year. I have so much more I want to do in Boston, especially now that winter is really beginning, bringing lots of snow, my favourite weather!