You are at university. Do you like stars, and stuff?

We revisit old ruminations on career paths cause it is topical

Another rehashed blast from the past.

Should you do astronomy as an undergrad? (the following is in part shamelessly cribbed from a colleagues previous freshman seminar for our majors):

Do you like stars and stuff?

If not, you probably should look for an alternative to astronomy, on the general principle that at this stage of life you should at least try to do things you actually like. If you do, good for you. Now, do you have the aptitude?

Professional astrophysics/astronomy is not about looking at stars per se (except at occasional star parties, for outreach or as a sideline hobby although a fair fraction but by no means all astronomers are enthusiastic amateur astronomers). Nor will you need to learn about constellations, or speculate about the meaning of it all, or the origin of the universe, or other sophomoric philosophical issues (except over occasional beer sessions except for the constellations bit).

What you will need to do, is at least 75-80% of a physics major (and preferably all of it, physics double majors are a common path, as is just doing an all physics or math/physics path, and adding astro later). Thats four years of 2 classes per semester, calculus based physics. You will also need at least 3 years of university level calculus (by which I mean calculus/differential equations etc), and if you find yourself taking as little math as possible, then your career options will rapidly shut down and you might want to rethink. Some computer science or electronic engineering wouldnt hurt, though most of the practical computing you need you will be expected to pick up through self-study. So, you would need, for example, to be able to look at HTML sample code, or a how to web page, or in a pinch a book, and figure out in few hours or days how to do adequate HTML coding, as a minimum. Most astrophysics types are expected to know one major compiled language (C++ most common, but Fortran is clearly the superior choice), several macro/mark-up/interpreted languages (like TeX/LaTeX, IDL, Perl or Python (tres trendy)) and higher level languages as needed.

Most people find this to be hard work. You should be ready for hard work.

Do you like to read? Cause youll be doing a lot of it. Books, papers, web pages, class notes; and, whether they admit it or not science fiction (ok, not all astro types are sci fi fans, just most of them: secretly, open Trekkies, whatever). What do I mean by lots? (For an undergrad.) Mean output of a professional astronomer is 3-4 papers per year. Each paper has 30-40 cites to the literature on average. You have to have read those, all of them! Now, if you work in a single sub-field (which is not uncommon) therell be a lot of overlap between cites in successive papers, but youll also have to read 2-3 papers for each one you cite. And, you need to keep up with the literature, there are new papers coming out every day So, were talking 1-200 papers to read per year.

Go here to read the rest:

So, you want to be an astrophysicist? Part 1 redux. [Dynamics of Cats]