When I was 17 at the Soviet 6-m

When I was 17 I was a student astronomer at the 6-m telescope in the Caucus mountains in the USSR. It was one of those peacekeeping student exchange things where Soviet teens were at Harvard-Smithsonian at the same time. I left a few weeks before the coup.

A lot of the places around the maps we’re seeing to today are places I visited: Krasnadar, Sochi, Novorossiysk.

I know these places.

And I saw them with Ukrainian, and Moldovian, and Belarussian teachers and astronomers. Mostly Ukrainian.