Astronomers...?

Question

Ok so I was looking out the window tonight and I could not stop thinking about how much I love the moon and the stars.. so heres my question...

What kind of school do you have to go through to become an astronomer? How much do they make?? Can anyone give me some info on this?

Answer 1

Astronomers generally need a PhD degree, so it's four years of undergraduate college (concentrating in math, physics and computers) and then four to nine years as a graduate student.  Then astronomers nowdays generally have a couple of "postdoctoral" temporary appointments prior to getting a long-term job as an astronomer.  It doesn't pay nearly as well as other professions requiring less education.  Post-docs make about $50,000, and professional astronomers and professors of astronomy make $80,000 to $160,000.

You have to love the work.  The biggest frustration is that there aren't many jobs, so people are forced to drop out at every stage of the professional ladder.  Luckily, the skills needed for astronomy are in demand in high-tech professions and so astronomers rarely go hungry.

There are a few jobs in astronomy at observatories and colleges that don't necessarily require a PhD, such as observatory staff.

If you love looking at the sky, you might join an amateur Astronomy club.  Doing Astronomy as a hobby may be more pleasurable than doing it professionally.

One more point---almost all professional astronomy data is freely available on the internet.  There's nothing to stop anyone from using the best astronomical data for whatever purpose they may desire, including private research.

Answer 2

I would think it's more about the love of the challenge than how much money you make.

You need to have an extreme love for this field...I assume.....and if you do well at it...the money may or may not be there....

but..more importantly....there are several levels of astronomy.

Just decide which particular field interests you...and...go for it!

Answer 3

Well, as the previous answerer says, you have many options. Keep an open mind to your possibilities. I went to a four year school and earned a BS in secondary ed. with a planetarium concentration. I did do a little planetarium work, but after a while I went off to graduate school and earned an MS in astronomy. Now I am back in secondary education. An MS in astronomy is a pretty low-level degree. I've done enough adjunct teaching at community colleges in basic astronomy courses, but that gets tiresome too -- one yearns for more challenge. I'm in fact a math dept..chair at a charter school, now.

But I share this info only to illustrate that aiming to become an astronomer may not be so simple. If you want to do planetarium work, you'll find employment in those more at museums than schools these days. If you want to be a professional research astronomer, maybe as part of a university department were you'll do some teaching too, then you'll need a PhD and usually a few years of what they call post-doc work. It isn't as glamorous as it may seem, and it doesn't pay well, and the field is very competitive. If you are good enough to hack it, and you love the field so much you are willing to make sacrifices and put a lot of time into it, then go for it! I realized I didn't;t want to be that single-focused, and never went for my PhD.

But, I must also tell you that there is a whole other side to being an astronomer! The wonderful world of amateur astronomy ("amateur" simply means "for the love of," it isn't a pejorative term). The REALLY COOL thing is that real, cutting-edge (or at least useful and unique) work can be done by amateurs. There are many more stars that there are astronomers, as they say. For example, I've had a back yard observatory with a 12-inch telescope and a CCD camera, which I used to take images of very faint asteroids, tracking their positions and sometimes measuring their brightness changes as they rotate, and reporting these results in the scientific literature. So, there is a thriving community of advanced amateurs who have one foot in the professional community. It is kind of nice, because as an amateur you have the freedom to do your own thing.

Answer 4

As others have said, to be a professional Astronomer typically requires a PhD.  At the University I attended the best paid professors were in the physic and astronomy department.  Unfortunately this is a trifling amount compared to what the football coach makes.

In short this means a lot of formal education, heavy in math, physics, and chemistry.

I discovered that my math ability was not good enough to get that far.  I am an astronomer though, just an amateur one.  Anyone can be that if you have the desire.  Read up on some of the popular books written on the subject, also there are some great magazines out there too like "Astronomy" and "Sky & Telescope".  A good starting place.