Allen Foster

Dec 20th: T-10 days

Goodbye Cleveland! I finally got to packing up. It took much longer than expected! Hit the road for Maryland to spend time with the fam for the holiday. Luckily, I got my airport of departure changed from CLE to IAD so I don’t have to fly back to Cleveland on Christmas day. Packing was aContinue reading “Dec 20th: T-10 days”

Dec 19th: T-11 days

Time to say goodbye. My fiancé, Polly is leaving today to go home for the holiday. She’s actually leaving 1 day early, for her grandfather’s funeral unfortunately. I don’t think it’s really set in for either of us. Today is the last day we’ll see each other for about 11 months. We’ll be able toContinue reading “Dec 19th: T-11 days”

Dec 14th (T-16 Days): Posting Photos from Northern EHT Training

The past few days I’ve been in Arizona assisting with an install of a new EHT VLBI receiver onto the 12m radio telescope at Kitt Peak. EHT stands for Event Horizon Telescope (which you’ve probably heard in the news after they released their image of the black hole light ring) and VLBI stands for VeryContinue reading “Dec 14th (T-16 Days): Posting Photos from Northern EHT Training”

Dec. 12th, (T-18 days) – Good Morning From Kitt Peak

Barely made it up to Kitt Peak before dark last night (with all the optical telescopes up here, it’s a no-no to have your car’s headlights on). The photo above is the nearly-full moon during sunrise looking out west-ward from the patio of our 70s era duplex apartment. There are so many telescopes up here…Continue reading “Dec. 12th, (T-18 days) – Good Morning From Kitt Peak”

December 10th: T-20 Days

I arrived in Tucson, AZ. Stepping off the plane was surreal — it was 65 degrees F and sunny! Weird to experience so close to Christmas. Didn’t get to a National Park Service center until too late to request a backcountry campsite, so it’s an AirBnB for the night. Going to do a little hikingContinue reading “December 10th: T-20 Days”

December 9th: T-21 Days to the Ice

Finishing up work, trying to document code, write up analyses, pack and plan for 10 months at Pole…. It’s been a busy past few weeks. Heading to Arizona to do some northern training with the Event Horizon Telescope at Kitt Peak. Since we’ll only have ~1.5 months of training on the ice before the summerContinue reading “December 9th: T-21 Days to the Ice”

About the Author

As of the writing of this introduction (Dec 2019), I am a 4th year graduate student at Case Western Reserve University in beautiful Cleveland, OH. I’m a PhD candidate in Physics working for Dr. John Ruhl on the South Pole Telescope. I will be taking a break from grad school between January 2020 – NovemberContinue reading “About the Author”