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Studying Astrophysics


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Thanks for the quick reply - glad to hear it is doable while working full time. I think if I can scrape the pennies together I may enrol for next year. I'd best get reading :rolleyes:

Thanks again for your help ;)

Times have changed over the last 20 years. One can even study on YouTube now from the comfort of their armchair, but I suppose the experience is not the same as meeting a Lucasian Prof face to face

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I got a PhD in astrophysics at Manchester. While I enjoyed it a lot, the downside was that there weren't too many jobs. Most were in universities where there was constant pressure to publish papers. Much of what was published was really rubbish!

After a decade I drifted into other fields and now I enjoy being an amateur astronomer again.

Eric

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It is one of those strange areas where a "professional" astronomer may possibly never look through a scope. They book time on a scope, someone points it at the required bit of the sky, gets the data and send it to the astronomer that requested it.

Astronomers book time on a scope, they don't own it. Even in a univrsity with a scope(s) you still have to book time and wait your turn.

The people that "work" on the scope are engineers that look after it and manage it. If you want to work with scopes take up low temprature engineering, as they are all computer systems systems administration is another option.

In easy terms no-one looks through Hubble, just the images are known worldwide and huge amounts of work is done on data that it collects. X-ray scopes are all outside the atmosphere but X-ray astronomy is a big area.

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I echo most of Ericgraham's comments, apart from the bit about publishing rubbish ;-)

I've taken the QMW MSc and it wasn't for the mathematically fainthearted. I also spent a few years at UCL getting my PhD in Extrasolar planet formation. If you really want to study astrophysics then I reckon you can't go wrong with either QMW or UCL. The number of post-docs available post-PhD is under pressure from government cutbacks (and has been for a good few years) but if you're good, can make the right connections then you're always in with a shout. Many of 'us' fall away from astrophysics for a number of reasons, either because one's home-life isn't mobile enough to do a post-doc in the States, or one has had enough of scraping a living out of academia.

If in doubt, try it out. There is no shame in starting to study astrophysics ... it can really aid your understanding of what you are observing through the telescope in your garden.

[i know the original post is a couple of years old, but all the recent posts may help someone else make an informed decision.]

Martin

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I echo most of Ericgraham's comments, apart from the bit about publishing rubbish ;-)

I've taken the QMW MSc and it wasn't for the mathematically fainthearted. I also spent a few years at UCL getting my PhD in Extrasolar planet formation. If you really want to study astrophysics then I reckon you can't go wrong with either QMW or UCL. The number of post-docs available post-PhD is under pressure from government cutbacks (and has been for a good few years) but if you're good, can make the right connections then you're always in with a shout. Many of 'us' fall away from astrophysics for a number of reasons, either because one's home-life isn't mobile enough to do a post-doc in the States, or one has had enough of scraping a living out of academia.

If in doubt, try it out. There is no shame in starting to study astrophysics ... it can really aid your understanding of what you are observing through the telescope in your garden.

[i know the original post is a couple of years old, but all the recent posts may help someone else make an informed decision.]

Martin

I think its a great post to follow up. Loved the theory and its applications, loved the mathematics, but came out of student life heavily in debt hence couldn't continue. I have promised myself if I ever win the lottery, then I will return back to academia and continue to do research and pay back something to the institutions or two that gave me insight into such a fascinating subject that has intrigued some of the greatest minds in history.

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OP (if you're still here :(), a bit off topic, but this wouldn't be the degree you did would it?

Aerospace Engineering (3 Years) [bEng] (The University of Manchester)

Only that's kind of what i've been using as a sort of 'benchmark' (a benchmark i'm rather unlikely to attain without maths a level, we'll see what happens there, looking at OU courses...). Anyway, what did you think of it? Would you recommend it? All i did to find it was really a case of "hmm, where's a good uni? Manchester, they have Jodrell Bank! *goes on website, clicks on course list A-Z* Oh "A"... Aerospace Engineering! Done." :)

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