Professional Astronomy?

[Manok101]

I was just wondering the easiest way of getting into it?

[brianb]

Get a good bachelors degree in physics or applied mathematics. Masters or doctorate in astrophysics.

[ollypenrice]

Astronomy or physics degree and then a Phd, then post doctoral research...

Or you could set up an astronomy B and B!!

Olly

[Capricorn]

Yep, Phd in Astronomy or Astrophysics.

Then a fair amount of luck, there are fair number of others doing the same qualifications and there are not that many openings.

The other question I would ask is: What do you think doing professional astronomy entails?

[Ben Ritchie]

I did a BSc and MSc in Physics/Astrophysics and PhD in Astronomy, which is the conventional route. Luck, ability to write/present well and networking are also very important.

However, it depends what you mean by "getting into it". If you mean the research (the fun bit) rather than getting an academic job then there are alternatives. There's no "easy" though.

edit:

The other question I would ask is: What do you think doing professional astronomy entails?

Lots of time on IRAF and LaTeX, the odd talk here and there, lots of telescope-time proposals and occasional cold, jetlag and mild hypoxia on top of a mountain? Or am I missing out on something?

[FraserClarke]

Lots of time on IRAF and LaTeX, the odd talk here and there, lots of telescope-time proposals and occasional cold, jetlag and mild hypoxia on top of a mountain? Or am I missing out on something?

Writing grant proposals to try and justify your existence and keep you and your postdocs/grad students in a job beyond the next six months?? Working out what your economic impact is?? Worrying that some other sod is going to publish exactly the same thing as you, and gazump two years worth of work?

Oh yeah, and getting to play with very cool bits of kit

And also remember there are very few professional astronomers out there -- lots of professional astroPHYSICists-- the emphasis is strongly on the physics rather than the astronomy.

Similar to others, my routes was (astro)physics undergrad followed by Astro PhD. With hindsight, I'd have done a straight physics degree rather than astro, and left that to the postgraduate -- but I certainly enjoyed my astrophysics degree a lot

A physics related degree then PhD is the standard route for academics. Experience doing astronomy related things during your undergrad is certainly helpful, but most PhD students are selected on the strength of their physics, not their astronomy.

Other (probably harder) routes include engineering/optics if you're more interested in the hardware side. Or becoming a telescope operator, for which you'll need some kind of science related degree/training -- but that's basically impossible unless you live in Hawaii or Chile...

[pete_l]

Oh yeah, and getting to play with very cool bits of kit

Really? I know a couple of professional astronomers (one american, one german). Neither of them ever actually look through a telescope¹ - one (I won't say which) is almost proud of the fact that he can't recognise the constellations and that astronomy is a "day job". As you say, getting funding, writing papers and spending more time debugging software than examining astronomical output. I wouldn't say that an interest in amateur astronomy translates much into the professional sphere.

With hindsight, I'd have done a straight physics degree

You'd have to be very careful about selecting the right physics degree. I have a BSc in physics and the course contained no astronomy whatsoever and only the merest hint of astrophysics (maybe 1 course block). The closest we got was a couple of lectures on orbital mechanics.

[1] Observing? That's what the technicians do! (Though they never actually do that either. It's all computer controlled - they only watch computer screens.)

[FraserClarke]

Really?

If that's what you want to do, yes. There is always a market for people who like doing practical stuff, because not many do! I build instruments for a living, and spend a good fraction[2] (though not enough) of my time clambering over big telescopes, fiddling with optics, machining parts of instruments, setting things up, going observing, analysing performance data, etc.

I also spend most of my time (ie too much) writing management plans, chasing suppliers, writing technical documents, etc. I spend a little bit of my time doing science and writing papers...

Your absolutely right though that this is *not* normal for a professional astrophysicist. Most sadly wouldn't know which end of a telescope to look through

The point about observing is interesting. Yes, a lot of the observing is done by technicians ('cos there is no way you'd let a muppety astronomer near an expensive telescope!!) -- but who does all the initial design and set-up work? You need people who understand how telescopes work, and how science is done, to get the best out of that. It's a real problem that fewer and fewer astronomers know how telescopes work

[2] Typed from the dome of a 20-inch RC Optical scope I'm in the middle of commissioning... which is a very cool bit of hands-on kit

[Dangerous-Dave]

I did Astronomy BSc and would rather gouge my eyes out with a blunt spoon than do it for a career. The research I did get to do, as part of my third year project, was just sitting in front of a computer analysing someone else's data. And not even interesting data, just dusty spectra represented as X/Y plots. The only way I could get any fun out of the project, was to look up the stars I was analysing were and put them into context in the night sky. It's just applied physics, like Tea Dwarf says, with telescopes being an occasional source of data collection.

If you want to work in astronomy, and retain the amateur wonder for the night sky, my advice would be to look for a job in a planetarium, become an astro gear dealer or somesuch.

[Dangerous-Dave]

Astronomy or physics degree and then a Phd, then post doctoral research...

Or you could set up an astronomy B and B!!

Olly

Do you know what ever happened to Aude Astronomique? I was looking at their website a few months ago but it appears to have gone.

[Manok101]

Why I thought about becoming an astronomer, would be to gain access to larger telescopes to be able to do real research into some of my favorite areas of astronomy, if there is a better way of accomplishing this goal what advice would you suggest? I hope this makes sense. I'm sure anything I could research is already being done though, I just thought it would be nice to be able to get any kind of pay for doing something I'm passionate about.

[Gary Parkerson]

I was just wondering the easiest way of getting into it?

Should we clarify whether you seek the easiest route to becoming a professional astronomer per se or to becoming one of the many other professionals whose work is simply associated with astronomy? Of the two groups, I personally know far more of the later...and confess to generally liking them a bit more too.

If you aspire to the former, I know of no shortcut to earning the degrees and then competing for funding to finance the projects that, if you survive the process, will be chosen for you. If, on the other hand, you simply seek to secure a niche that allows you to earn all or a part of your living from an activity that directly involves astronomy, the options are limitless and, perhaps, far more interesting.

[Ben Ritchie]

Your absolutely right though that this is *not* normal for a professional astrophysicist. Most sadly wouldn't know which end of a telescope to look through

There is certainly some truth to this, i'm always quite surprised at how many professional astronomers would also have no interest in looking through a telescope if the chance was there.

Why I thought about becoming an astronomer, would be to gain access to larger telescopes to be able to do real research into some of my favorite areas of astronomy, if there is a better way of accomplishing this goal what advice would you suggest?

As another couple of thoughts, depending quite what you mean by "real research" (and, to some extent, the area) there's a lot of very high quality publicly-available data that's sitting unused in the archives (try archive.eso.org, for example, or the HST archives). I regularly dip into this as part of other research and find myself surprised how much great data never gets used, but if you're competent with spectroscopy or photometry then there's no reason it couldn't be done - the data reduction is straightforward, the harder bit is generally figuring out what it means and (if you want to publish it) writing it up to a standard that'll get past a referee.

There's also amateur-professional collaboration, although I wouldn't say this is necessarily an easier route than the BSc/PhD as the 'amateurs' have generally spent years reaching a very high level of competence (...that likely surpasses the 'professionals' in terms of hands-on skill). Look at what Nick Howes is doing, for example, and Robin Leadbeater's spectroscopy of WR140 turned up in a presentation at a professional conference I was at recently.

[Capricorn]

The recent replies are why I asked:

What do you think doing professional astronomy entails?

Astronomy is generally not looking through a scope, it is number crunching and for that you do not need a scope, or even access to one.

One area these days is Galaxy Formation. You cannot view Galaxy Formation, it takes too long 1 maybe 2 billion years to see what is happening. Research into galaxy formation is developing a computer model to demonstrate your particular theory.

There are more openings in system administration of the computers that observatories have.

Think about it like this, Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer supply data and images that astronomers use. You cannot look through any of them. And for future astronomy bigger and better space telescopes will be required and again you cannot peer through whatever is developed. Professional astronomy is not looking through a scope.

[Ben Ritchie]

One area these days is Galaxy Formation. You cannot view Galaxy Formation, it takes too long 1 maybe 2 billion years to see what is happening. Research into galaxy formation is developing a computer model to demonstrate your particular theory.

Ah, my thesis topic - I did N-body/hydrodynamic models of galaxy and galaxy cluster formation. I became an observer afterwards as it was all a bit disconnected from what I enjoyed about astronomy.

Developing models is all very well, but without observation they're fairly useless - it's really a two-pronged approach where the theorists do whatever it is they do and the observers try and figure out what nature did. So although you can't observe a single galaxy forming, you can observe the process statistically via a large sample of forming galaxis - although that's challenging too because most of the action happens at z>3.

Much of what I do now is observational work on high-mass stars, particularly high-mass binaries, to compare to population-synthesis models of how these things are expected to evolve across the H-R diagram.

[F64]

interesting discussion

[E621Keith]

Very interesting discussion indeed. I still remebered the astronomy club at my undergrad university, more of our members came from the engineering faculty rather than physics. It seems like many physicist were much happier working through 50 pages of equations than to come and look through our telescope.

[Hypernova]

This is all very interesting reading to me, as someone seriously considering pursuing astrophysics as a career. My current course of action will be me doing an Access to Higher Education course at South Cheshire next September and after that I will take an undergraduate course in physics/astrophysics (not sure quite which one yet, I'll get a better idea as the time comes nearer to choose) most likely at Keele Uni. Going on from there probably a higher level course in astrophysics.

I understand that the job of an astrophysicist primarily involves number crunching, data sifting and being sat in front of a pc screen all day. Quite different to the old fashioned image of an astronomer peering into the eyepiece of a whopping great telescope. At the moment, all that monotonous work doesn't seem all that off putting and I think that I will just probably get through it all and in the end enjoy doing it.

It's something to aim for to me and my entire family is supporting me and encouraging me to give a go. I just hope that I am up to uni, as someone who has no prior scientific/mathematical background (I only hold a gsce equivalent in maths) but is seriously interested in researching the universe.

[Ben Ritchie]

I understand that the job of an astrophysicist primarily involves number crunching, data sifting and being sat in front of a pc screen all day ... At the moment, all that monotonous work doesn't seem all that off putting

There's a lot of time spent reducing spectra and doing analysis (e.g. one of my current projects covers more than 100 OB stars each observed with the VLT between 6 and 13 times over 14 months - a lot of spectra) but I don't see it as 'monotony' at all. It's a kind of giant puzzle with the pieces slowly coming together as you proceed. Then you start to see the big picture emerging from the data and it becomes really rather fun - sometimes it can surprise you along the way too.

As an aside, going out to Paranal 13 times over 14 months is somewhat impractical, so that's all "service mode" - the Paranal staff get the data and a few weeks later I get a DVD from Garching, so I don't go anywhere near a telescope for it. Part of the reason I have a Dob in the back garden

[v4169sgr]

This is all very interesting reading to me, as someone seriously considering pursuing astrophysics as a career. My current course of action will be me doing an Access to Higher Education course at South Cheshire next September and after that I will take an undergraduate course in physics/astrophysics (not sure quite which one yet, I'll get a better idea as the time comes nearer to choose) most likely at Keele Uni. Going on from there probably a higher level course in astrophysics.

I understand that the job of an astrophysicist primarily involves number crunching, data sifting and being sat in front of a pc screen all day. Quite different to the old fashioned image of an astronomer peering into the eyepiece of a whopping great telescope. At the moment, all that monotonous work doesn't seem all that off putting and I think that I will just probably get through it all and in the end enjoy doing it.

It's something to aim for to me and my entire family is supporting me and encouraging me to give a go. I just hope that I am up to uni, as someone who has no prior scientific/mathematical background (I only hold a gsce equivalent in maths) but is seriously interested in researching the universe.

Couldn't help noticing this post in a very interesting thread - enough to bring me out of the woodwork :-)

As someone who has spent rather a large number of years at Keele Uni, and taken a Physics BSc, a PhD in Astrophysics, and a PGCEFE all while there [MSc in Astronomy doesn't count as that was at Sussex ], and therefore has a passionate interest in both astronomy / astrophysics and life long learning, I can only encourage you in your journey - with the caution that it has better not be for paid employment

Depends on your background, but I bet you will find the access course an eye opener - because you will be able to do far more than you realised, because re-acquiring study skills is a shock to the system, and finally [best] because [well-run] access courses can stimulate even more interest.

I am bound to agree with you that Keele is a good choice, but remember my words are based on experience of at least 15 yrs ago now, and the place may have changed somewhat. Probably you know this by now, but when I was there, there was a very well run amateur dome with a couple of very nicely looked after older telescopes - of far from negligible aperture. I suggest though that you set your sights on the fundamentals - a BSc in Physics, combined with another subject e.g. a social science, or a humanity. Take the time to brush up on your mathematics - you will need it!!! There are plenty of opportunities to satisfy your astro leanings while doing so, and there is [was?] even an official module in this area - as I remember, not without a good deal of interest.

After that, I am sure you will be able to take a view into whether a PhD is something you wish to pursue. I did. And liked it - alot. But it is not without its extremely significant economic costs. You've got to be very good indeed, very lucky, and have a silver tongue to have a stab at making a living from it. Some do, but if nothing much has changed, then be prepared for years of 'soft money', a peripatetic existence, and not knowing whether you will be able to stay in the field - 'security' of 2 years is good for a post-doc!

I am now well out of the field - for the better, in my case, as I have no clue how I could have raised a family from inside - but missing it very much, and intend to keep contributing, if at a slower pace. I have not published for 10 years, but my particular area of interest can involve / benefit from very long baselines

Comments here on there not being much correlation between practical experience of telescopes and 'professional' status is spot on, by the way. Not that there aren't exceptions, and there were some in my day at Keele [and I believe Leicester]. But certainly true in my case, to my huge regret, which is why I now have a OO CT8 to play with, which I am having to get to grips with very slowly and gradually. I've had it for a month now, and still have not got to 'first light' status, simply because I am so impractical that it is taking me ages to discover how to put it all together and make it work. I've just achieved, for example, fitting an optical extension tube to the focuser, and now aspire to complete the collimation, and then learn how to balance the tube on the mount. Just learning how to mount the OTA on the mount was a hugely nerve-wracking experience - and the learning curve is awesome

Good luck in whatever you choose!

[Earl]

Id go with Ollys choice !

[Hypernova]

Couldn't help noticing this post in a very interesting thread - enough to bring me out of the woodwork :-)

As someone who has spent rather a large number of years at Keele Uni, and taken a Physics BSc, a PhD in Astrophysics, and a PGCEFE all while there [MSc in Astronomy doesn't count as that was at Sussex ], and therefore has a passionate interest in both astronomy / astrophysics and life long learning, I can only encourage you in your journey - with the caution that it has better not be for paid employment

Depends on your background, but I bet you will find the access course an eye opener - because you will be able to do far more than you realised, because re-acquiring study skills is a shock to the system, and finally [best] because [well-run] access courses can stimulate even more interest.

I am bound to agree with you that Keele is a good choice, but remember my words are based on experience of at least 15 yrs ago now, and the place may have changed somewhat. Probably you know this by now, but when I was there, there was a very well run amateur dome with a couple of very nicely looked after older telescopes - of far from negligible aperture. I suggest though that you set your sights on the fundamentals - a BSc in Physics, combined with another subject e.g. a social science, or a humanity. Take the time to brush up on your mathematics - you will need it!!! There are plenty of opportunities to satisfy your astro leanings while doing so, and there is [was?] even an official module in this area - as I remember, not without a good deal of interest.

After that, I am sure you will be able to take a view into whether a PhD is something you wish to pursue. I did. And liked it - alot. But it is not without its extremely significant economic costs. You've got to be very good indeed, very lucky, and have a silver tongue to have a stab at making a living from it. Some do, but if nothing much has changed, then be prepared for years of 'soft money', a peripatetic existence, and not knowing whether you will be able to stay in the field - 'security' of 2 years is good for a post-doc!

I am now well out of the field - for the better, in my case, as I have no clue how I could have raised a family from inside - but missing it very much, and intend to keep contributing, if at a slower pace. I have not published for 10 years, but my particular area of interest can involve / benefit from very long baselines

Comments here on there not being much correlation between practical experience of telescopes and 'professional' status is spot on, by the way. Not that there aren't exceptions, and there were some in my day at Keele [and I believe Leicester]. But certainly true in my case, to my huge regret, which is why I now have a OO CT8 to play with, which I am having to get to grips with very slowly and gradually. I've had it for a month now, and still have not got to 'first light' status, simply because I am so impractical that it is taking me ages to discover how to put it all together and make it work. I've just achieved, for example, fitting an optical extension tube to the focuser, and now aspire to complete the collimation, and then learn how to balance the tube on the mount. Just learning how to mount the OTA on the mount was a hugely nerve-wracking experience - and the learning curve is awesome

Good luck in whatever you choose!

Thank you very much for that very informative and thought-provoking reply

You have given me a fair bit of info to mull over regarding the amount of work out there for a newly graduated person, and also trying to keep down a job for extended periods of time. I guess that is something that a lot of people fresh from uni experience and probably the best way to get past such a barrier into employment would be to get contacts within the industry, prove yourself at uni and get the best grades possible and as you said know how to talk your way into a job. The possibility of unemployment doesn't deter me as much as I thought it might, in fact it makes me want to spur on a try my best at uni and find a job in the astrophysics sector that I'll enjoy. It always pays to be optimistic hey, better than carrying on with my current path and doing greenkeeping forever. I am really determined to study the universe as a career even if it means little job security in the future.

Other than that, I am pretty much 100% going to study at Keele. I have had a few good recommendations for it and I feel it would be a great place for me to study. RE: the observatory, I understand that it houses a 24" reflector (recently re-coated and overhauled by OO, a mate of mine works there and helped machine parts for it). They seem to be carrying out a fair amount of important research there according to the observatory website. Searching for planets, study of binaries, AGN and Stellar and Galactic Ecology among others... exciting stuff and just the thing I would like to be involved in.

I have been starting to build up my maths knowledge over the last week by working my way through a basic mathematics book for beginners from the local library. I have only got to dividing fractions so far, but it is a gradual process and every little bit of basic maths knowledge helps at sometime or another.

And finally thank you for your words of encouragement. I will keep you all informed every now and again about my progress

[Petrol]

Id go with Ollys choice !

I thought the same He seems to have clinched a niche market – B&B FTW! Mucho respect

[dph1nm]

It's a real problem that fewer and fewer astronomers know how telescopes work

In fact it is now such a problem that I see that there are now special European grants to provide observing experience for new postgrads! Certainly it has become much less common for professional astronomers to actually travel to observatories in the last 10 years or so.

I would also note that in the current financial climate, acquiring (funded) PhD places and subsequent Post-Doc positions is only going to get harder. Of course, if you have your own cash ....

NIgelM

[narrowbandpaul]

Hey

I have a degree in Physics/Astronomy at Glasgow. I am 1 year through a Ph.D in CMOS image sensors, but I am thinking of leaving with an MPhil and changing to do a PhD in infrared galaxy stuff at edinburgh, hopefully

paul