Here is a list of summer undergrad/first year grad astronomy internships I'd suggest. I've included a few contacts. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Catholic U of America (a second way to work at GSFC) - contact Dr. Steve Kraemer at CUA Physics NASA Ames# NASA Johnson Jet Propulsion Lab Lunar & Planetary Laboratory, Tucson National Optical Astronomy Observatories (both Kitt Peak and Cerro Tololo) www.noao.edu Gemini Observatory www.gemini.edu National Solar Observatory www.nso.edu Space Telescope Science Institute www.stsci.edu Arecibo Radio Observatory (Puerto Rico) National Radio Astronomy Observatory (3 sites: Charlottesville VA, Green Bank WV, Socorro NM) Center for Astrophysics (based at Harvard) Naval Research Lab (Washington DC) McDonald Observatory (Texas) http://www.as.utexas.edu/reu/ Maria Mitchell Observatory (Nantucket) Lowell Observatory www.lowell.edu SETI Institute www.seti.org worth trying: Fermilab Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (Colorado) Southwest Research Institute any university with a big astronomy department/program, including but not limited to *Univ. California at Irvine *UCLA *Univ. California at San Diego (UCSD) Univ. California - other campuses: Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Davis, Riverside etc. Stanford U. Caltech Observatories of Carnegie Institute Dept. of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institute (Washington DC)# Univ. Washington# U. Arizona Arizona State U.# U. Colorado Univ. Arkansas, both Fayetteville and Little Rock Penn State# Cornell (runs Arecibo) *UNLV *Univ. Oregon *Univ. Toledo *Univ. Wisconsin Univ. Wyoming Infrared Observatory etc. # = has some astrobiology Here are some European internships, which are probably easier for those with an EU/ESO member state/ESA member state passport European Southern Observatory - Munich, maybe Chile www.eso.org European Space Agency - mainly Madrid, Nordwijk (near Amsterdam) Try lots of British (and other) universities/observatories/institutes: Royal Observatory Edinburgh Universities U. Cambridge, Institute of Astronomy Oxford U Durham University Imperial College London Queen Mary College London Observatoire de Paris Meudon Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (IAP) www.iap.fr CERN, Geneva SISSA, Trieste www.sissa.it * had UL summer student in physics (P) or astronomy (A) (partial list): A 2006 Chip Davis, Univ. Toledo (later got Master's in astronomy there) P 2006 Wes Miller, UCSD (later won Fulbright to Hungary) P 2007 Wes Miller, Oregon (later started PhD there) A 2007 Blakesley Burkhart, Univ. Wisconsin (later started PhD there) P 2008 Katie Davis, UC-Irvine (later started PhD at Purdue) A 2010 Shannon Mackenzie, UCLA P 2010 Jennifer Wojno, UNLV