When the coronavirus pandemic put the world on pause, telescopes and the data they provide went down right along with everything else. With direct sky observations suddenly out of reach, much of the work in the field of astronomy was put on hold, at least temporarily.
“I think the proper comparison here is someone who works in a lab, and their lab has been shut down. It just happens to be a lab that’s miles away on a mountain,” said Elena Gallo, an astronomer and astrophysicist at the University of Michigan.
Unlike a typical lab, however, the high demand for telescope time means that most astronomers are lucky to reserve a few nights a year for observation, even outside of a pandemic.