Apologies for the
hiatus in posts these last few weeks, life and work have been very busy. Since
I've been swamped with so much work, I thought I'd take the time in this post
to describe what an astronomer or astrophysicist
does on a daily basis.
When you think of
life as an astronomer, the first thing that comes to mind is telescopes and
star parties. You imagine the scientists out late at night staring through
their telescopes and taking notes about what they see. While this part of the
job, astronomers have much more to do. Graduate students and professors in
astronomy spend most of their time teaching, doing research and applying for
grant money. They teach or assistant teach college courses, and are constantly
writing proposals to different organizations asking for money to fund their
research. But what does "doing research" actually mean? In astronomy,
research can mean one of three things: taking images with a telescope and analyzing them using a computer
(observational astronomy), writing computer programs to simulate interactions
between objects in outer space (theoretical astronomy), or building telescopes,
cameras, and detectors for astronomers to use (instrumentation). The first two require
you to sit at a computer most of the day and
write computer programs to perform certain tasks. Observational
astronomers also spend a lot of time applying for observation time on both
space and ground based telescopes. If their proposals are accepted, they
receive images from the telescope that they can then analyze to understand the
physics and properties of the objects they are looking at. Theoretical
astronomers are more like physicists or mathematicians. They think of a situation that might occur in
outer space, write down all of the physics equations that govern the system, and write computer
programs to simulate what's going on. Then they can compare their results with
real observations to see if they are correct! The last group of astronomers
spend most of their time in labs, building and testing devices for other
astronomers to use. This is a more hands on job, and takes just as much
engineering skill as it does astronomy knowledge. If it weren't for these
people building nice cameras and telescopes, astronomers would be out of a job!
Aside from doing
actual science, astronomers spend a good amount of time writing papers about
their findings, doing community outreach, and presenting their work at
conferences and colleges around the world. Being an astronomer is a lot of
work, but also a lot of fun. It's a fast paced and never ending job, and there
is always more to learn about outer space!
