Gulp!!!

Most of the accidents I hear about have to do with the hazards of traveling to and from observatories and conferences. A recent tragic accident was the death of Prof. David Schramm, a world renound University of Chicago physicist and cosmologist. He died in a private plane accident. A decade ago, an astronomer died at an observatory when a special set of interlock doors in the observatory dome failed to operate properly and he was crushed to death between the inside and outside walls of the rotating observatory dome at Kitt Peak. I have even heard of close calls in which astronomers working high up at the prime focus of a telescope, have nearly fallen 2-3 stories down to the hard floor during long observing sessions while tracking objects. During a multi-hour photographic session, you are inside the prime focus cage, and this cage can move from as low as 5 feet above the floor to 2-3 stories. If you forget where you are, you can take a wrong step out of the cylindrical cage and fall to your death. I have never heard of this happening, but have heard of at least one close call.

There have also been laboratory accidents of various kinds involving cryogenic liquids which are used to cool detectors and other instruments used by astronomers and physicists. Cryogenic liquids include hydrogen, helium and nitrogen which are in the liquid form at a few degrees above absolute zero. These can burn unprotected skin, or in some cases cause 'ice plugs' in the narrow necks of special thermos bottles called dewars, causing then to pressurize like miniature bombs.

Lasers are also used to collimate optical equipment or other applications, and without special eye protection they can cause damage and blindness, especially the infrared kind which you cannot see. A brief glance in the wrong direction not knowing that the laser is on, could invisibly lead to blindness at the several watt power outputs that are often used to drive complex optical 'benches' for optical interferometry experiments.

Although not as common in astronomy, physicists have to deal with high-voltage lines and the usual hazards with deadly electrical shocks in some of their experiments 'on the beam line'.

Particle accelerators produce streams of many different kinds of radiation at the collision vertex of the colliding beams, or the target area. Usually these particles and radiations ( gamma, synchrotron) are damped and absorbed within the walls of the 'beam dump', but one can imagine careless operating conditions in which this safety is compromised and someone gets a dose of hard radiation resulting in a bad sunburn, or worse. I know of no such accidents so I assume that safety precautions are strictly adhered too at these laboratories.