Job Descriptions - Definitions - Career Fields: Astronomer
 

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Astronomer

An aptitude for maths and a high intellect are necessary if you wish to become one of these professional scientists. You also have to be a very patient person for much of your work would involve long, tedious hours of observation of a single star or other celestial body.
You would then have to gather your information, analyse it, make meticulously accurate notes and be able to express your conclusions lucidly.

Galileo Galilei made his own telescope while he was teaching mathematics at Padua University in Italy and discovered the moon's craters, some of Jupiter's satellites' sunspots and the stars of the Milky Way. Unlike Galileo, who was forced by the Inquisition to recant his support of the Copernican system, (the theory, published in 1543 by the Polish astronomer, Nicolas Copernicus, which stated that the earth and the planets rotated around the sun and which opposed the Ptolemaic system) you would have the freedom to explore all plausable theories without hindrance.

As modern technology has supplied this profession with state-of-the-art equipment, you should also become computer literate and have the ability to use all these aids. Good eyesight - if you are colourblind look for another career. There is a big demand for telescope time at the large observatories so your projects would have to be carefully planned and organised.

The personal qualifications include the ability to think critically and creatively; the ability to identify and solve problems while working independently; a strong aptitude for physics and maths; the willingness to work long and irregular hours (nights and over weekends) - often in remote areas - and dedication.

Astronomers research the nature, origin and evolution of astronomical objects in order to obtain a deeper knowledge of the laws of physics and a physicist uses the universe as a laboratory. Since we do not have space ships which can easily transport us to and fro in the universe, we have to use information such as radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum like radio waves, gamma rays and cosmic rays - tiny particles which interact with the earth's atmosphere or magnetic field. If you wanted to collect information on astronomical objects, you would use data from signals through space-based, ground-based, optical, gamma ray, X-ray and radio telescopes in conjunction with sensitive detecting devises. Armed with as many pieces of a puzzle, plus the ideas of modern physics, you would then have to interpret them in the framework of a mathematical model.

In 1066, Halley's comet - a regular visitor to our earth every 76 years - was thought by King Harold of England to be an omen of doom. Soon after seeing the comet, he was defeated by William the Conqueror and so the myth continued that comets bring bad luck. As recently as October 30, 1937, the earth missed possible destruction by a mere three seconds when a minor planet, Hermes which weighed about 500,000 tons, passed within half a million miles of our world - travelling at an estimated speed of light (187,000 miles per hour). If its orbit had deviated even slightly, it might have smashed into the earth with an explosion that would have obliterated the entire population. Astronomers keep a constant watch for meteorites which are usually composed of stone or an alloy of nickel and iron. (Asteroids are minor planets which have their beginnings in the void between Jupiter and Mars). The iron-nickel meteorite which crashed into the Arizona desert more than twenty thousand years ago, weighed about 2 million tons and the hole or crater which it caused was nearly one mile wide and 570 feet deep. Its destructive force was bigger than a 30 megaton H-bomb or 30 million tons of TNT!

Much of the observational work as an optical and infra-red astronomer is done at night so you would have to adjust your hours accordingly. However, with modern technology, it is possible to pre-programme the telescopes, thus making it unnecessary to be on duty all the time. As an astronomer, you would probably become part of an existing team who were already working on a project. Much of the telescopic observations, formerly done by the eye, have been replaced by sophisticated and far more reliable instrumentation like photographic plates or films and photosensitive devises. Your task would be to set the telescope and ensure that it is tracking accurately while you operated all the subsidiary instruments. At the end of your shift, you would be required to feed this information into the programmed computer. It would also be your duty to prepare this programme. About one quarter of your time would be spent in observation and the gathering of records while the remainder would be spent analysing your results, discerning and comparing them with other records and preparing a report on your findings and conclusions.

As astronomers from all over the world are working on similar projects, you would probably be in constant communication with them either by mail or by email. The computer has become a vital tool in astronomy and most of your reports would be of interest to others in the same field of interest. Someone in Japan, for instance, might like to visit you and friendships are easy to make by people who share the same interests. There are world conventions which are held regularly in different countries so you might find yourself travelling to far distant lands.


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Courtesy: CareerExpo

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