> On top of that, being geographically bound doesn’t help. I can absolutely believe that this is still an issue, but it's also highly disappointing that's stil

> On top of that, being geographically bound doesn’t help. I can absolutely believe that this is still an issue, but it's also highly disappointing that's still the case. All your data analysis is done on a computer, and I'd bet that every telescope or instrument you have to interact with is computer controlled and can be worked with remotely with little modification. Yes, astrophysical datasets can be absolutely enormous, and bandwidth can become a serious constraint, but we have solutions to those problems too - that's one of the reason terminal sessions (in their various modern guises) are so powerful. You would think or hope that by the end of 2020 when a global pandemic has taught many of us that, for much of the time, for those of us whose working lives are mostly spent "in computers", we would have learned that geography is not a significant barrier. At least not with decent enough internet connectivity. Again, sadly, I'm not surprised to see that in certain circles it is still an issue. It's a cultural change, and those can take an awfully long time to work themselves out.