What can I do as an astronomer?

Question

I have always been amazed with space, but really don't think I have the opprotunity to even make a job out of it. I have a very instense interest, and no one else that I know really cares deeply much about it the way I do. It just amazes me so much and I could go on forever about space and earth and how literally awesome the whole thing is, but anyways.

About getting a career with it..I got very poor grades during my high school career. I am pretty sure I don't even have the chance, because I never took a physics class or anything. Besides being in NASA, are there other ways you can work a career with astronomy?

Answer 1

i know how you feel,i love astronomy with all my heart,but i am horrible at math,and i did bad in school,but i know so much about it,and can talk about it forever<the thing is with me i took physics but didnt have a strong enogh math background,my plan is to go to collage and start with the simplest math classes they got and work my *** off,becues i want it that bad,and if you do to,then i sugest you do the same,if you dont have your highschool deploma,get your GED,get in a community collage,take the basics and transfer to a university later on,if i was you i would go to the one in arizona,the university of arizona at tucson,they have on awsome astronomy department,thats where im going,i would like to talk with you more,maybee we could have a support team for eachother,im open to emails,so get in touch with me!!!ok,i hope this helped!!

hey,i think you will do great if you go by my sugestions,i would like to talk with you more,those other people are stupid,dont litsen to them,me and you have alot of potential to get a career in astronomy,why,because we love it!!!thats all we need is pasion,and i think we would make a good team,and we can worck thru this and get a career in astronomy,pleas right back!!!

Answer 2

You have to be smart to be an astronomer. If you are then go to college and get a degree. If not, make it a hobby and buy yourself a telescope.

Answer 3

Consider advanced amateur astronomy, as some others here have alluded to.

There is plenty of real science to be done by advanced amateurs with equipment such as a 20 or 30 cm telescope and a CCD camera. The three main pursuits from an instrumental standpoint are astrometry, photometry, and spectroscopy, i.e., objects' positions, brightnesses, and spectra, respectively.

To use myself as an example, I've measured asteroid and comet positions with a CCD camera on a 30 cm 'scope, and sent the results to be published in the Minor Planet Bulletin.I've also measured some brightness changes in some asteroids to learn about how fast they spin.

Fun stuff to do, nobody makes you get a degree (although I have a couple - it doesn't hurt). Best thing is, you're your own boss under the stars like it should be!

ps - check out the IAU Minor Planet Center's site to get an idea of what is involved in contributing to science as an advanced amateur:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html

Answer 4

There aren't a lot of jobs in astronomy if you don't have a PhD.  You don't have to be brilliant to get one, you just need to be motivated and reasonably good at math.  If you want to get a PhD in astronomy, you need to major in physics in college.

With a PhD, you can work for NASA, a national lab (NOAO, LALN, LLNL), or a college or university.  These jobs mainly involve doing research; some will involve teaching as well.  With a masters degree, you can work as a research assistant (those jobs can be hard to find though) or teach at a community college (no research).  With a 4-year degree (BA, BS) you could teach high school or work at a museum or planetarium.

If you're interested, take a shot at it.  Take the intro physics courses and calclulus at a college or community college and see if you can handle it.  If I can get a PhD in physics, anyone can with enough motivation.  And I'll have one pretty soon.

I'll respectfully disagree with David; my job is anything but boring even as a graduate student.  I'm on my fourth telescope observing run this year, with at least three more planned, most of them out of the country - Europe, South America, right now I'm on a tropical island.  I've discovered several new things, written a few papers, and I'm trying to make significant advances to my field.

Answer 5

there really isnt anything you can do to get a career in astronomy. i had great grades in school but the only way to make a job of it is to have your masters or higher from a highly respected and very expensive university and get time with the schools telescopes.  Most of the worlds largest scopes (ie. the ones needed to do professional stuff), are owned and operated atleast in part by universitys.  Good luck, but dont hold your breath.

Answer 6

Astronomy is all kinds of math and physics applied to things in the universe, their motions, their properties, and the forces by which they relate to each other. Every once in a while, an astronomer will stargaze, but for most of them the job is nose-to-the-grindstone math. You know what Runga-Kutta means? It's a math trick that you'd use it when you model the nuclear generation rate versus mass fraction inside stars. If you don't do well in math, then you probably ought not aspire to be an astronomer. I do fairly well in math, but my degree is from a poor-boy state college, plus I'm White and male and so I don't get the special preference-for-hire breaks, and as a result I can't get a job in astronomy.

Hey, Spacy, do you determine your own preliminary asteroid orbits with that positional data? My equipment isn't all that good (like I mentioned, I'm a poor boy), so I'm not in a position to gather data, but I can crunch out preliminary orbits easily if I can get ahold of them from someone else.

Answer 7

you need to figure out what it is about astronomy that you really enjoy.

do you really want a career in it?  Unlike what the others above me have said, its possible.  Observatories employ a number of people with different backgrounds, but if you want to work as an astronomer, you are going to need some college.  OKAY... a LOT of college.  Astronomy means lots of MATH, Physics, Chemistry, Math, Geology, and of course, Math.

Maybe you could check out a local amateur astronomy club.  You can do something else for a job, but use a telescope on the weekends.  Amateurs even do real science.

Answer 8

Go live in Roswell, New Mexico and become a hippie.

Answer 9

The only real way to make a living out of it is to teach the subject at a college level, which usually requires a PhD. If you are interested, then why not just study it independantly? Just become "an amateur astronomer". They basically use astronomy as a hobby.

If you never took a physics class, then you are not going to like astrophysics very much. Personally, I love physics, but for people that don't, astrophysics is going to be a nightmare.

NASA is extreamily hard to get into unless you have a PhD in astronomy and astrophysics, which is hard to achieve. And even at that, it is still hard to get in. And getting into NASA doesn't mean your going to become and astronaut. You could be stuck behind a desk all day going over mission plans.

Best bet is to get a solid job, and use astronomy as a hobby.

Answer 10

Eri; do you think the level of excitement will stay up once youve finished your phd? maybe its fun being a research assistant to some big names, but once you become a researcher yourself, youll have to smart small.

BUT - listen to eri if she actually works in the field.

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astronomy itself is pretty boring.

ive got a distinction in cosmology, but thats as far as ill go [though i like reading the odd book or journal article]

1. The thing that put me off it as a career is that what you will do as an 'astronomer' is read spectrum analyses and black dots on graphs trying to make sense of it. Ok once every few weeks, but as a 9-5 job, deadshit boring.

2. You won't make any discoveries, there are thousands of huge telescopes which get the latest pictures and the ESA will note any new discoveries.

3. You probably wont spend much time LOOKING at stars, youll just be reading data. Everything that can be seen has been done.

4. Unless you're a genius maverick mathematician, you wont make any discoveries about the universe either.

SO

You can either sit in an office everyday by graphin spectrum analyses OR get another career and spend time loving the universe's amazing qualities by investing in a telescope and reading articles off Arxiv, and being an amateur astronomer.