An astronomer on what it’s really like to stargaze for a living

metamorworks/Shutterstocl Jodie Foster tearing up a dirt road, yelling stellar coordinates into a walkie-talkie à la the 1997 sci-fi film Contact. Control rooms alive with a cacophony of “enhance that signal”. Real-time discovery. That’s what I pictured when my PhD supervisor told me I’d be going observing at a telescope. Cut to 2am on top of a mountain in La Palma last April, at an altitude that makes you forget you’re in the Canary Islands. It was utterly freezing, and I had dressed for the…