Career making telescopes?

[Alaness]

I'm in my final year at university having studied a Micky mouse degree in media. I think I've made a massive mistake going the way I have. Now I want to make a fresh start in astronomical instruments - Specifically telescopes/CCD cameras.

Dose anyone have any advice of what I need to do to get into this career? Where & what to study, who to send my CV to?

[ollypenrice]

Telescopes and CCDs are very different things, the scopes needing expertise in mechanical and optical engineering and the the CCDs in electronic. I suspect that a decision between those two might come first.

Olly

[NGC 1502]

Maybe contact Orion Optics UK and ask what qualifications are needed to work for them ?

All the very best with your career choice. Anyone who has a job they love has found happiness.

Regards, Ed.

[brantuk]

What a great idea. With media you'd only be surrounded by state of the art technology and loads of fresh eye candy, whereas scope making would be mixing it with geeky older blokes and interferometry testing. If it were me I'd try and combine both lol.

(Forgive my tongue in cheek joke but the above suggestions seem a sensible first approach - also look at post grad university work - maybe technical posts in University physics/astronomy depts where you could get retrained cost effectively).