Ask Slashdot: How To Pick Up Astronomy and Physics As an Adult?

First time accepted submitter samalex01 (1290786) writes "I'm 38, married, two young kids, and I have a nice job in the IT industry, but since I was a kid I've had this deep love and passion for astronomy and astrophysics. This love and passion though never evolved into any formal education or anything beyond just a distant fascination as I got out of high school, into college, and started going through life on more of an IT career path. So my question, now that I'm 38 is there any hope that I could start learning more about astronomy or physics to make it more than just a hobby? I don't expect to be a Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I'd love to have enough knowledge in these subjects to research and experiment to the point where I could possibly start contributing back to the field. MIT Open Courseware has some online courses for free that cover these topics, but given I can only spend maybe 10 hours a week on this would it be a pointless venture? Not to mention my mind isn't as sharp now as it was 20 years ago when I graduated high school. Thanks for any advice or suggestions."

Comments

Brush up on calculus

[Anonymous Coward]

Brush up on calculus. Without math, astrophysics, well, anything, really, is just playing with Legos. Khan Academy or a million other sites can assist your math textbook self-study. From there, get an Astrophysics "required courses" guide from a university and have at. Oh, be sure to skip the humanities and other useless classes. O:-)

2 ways

[i.r.id10t]

1) Find your local planetarium and get involved. They may need/want volunteers to conduct shows, etc.

2) Find a local community college that offers an AA in astronomy or similar field.

Now, these may be unreliable for you, but the community college I work at has both an AA for astronomy, one for physics (both for transferring to a state university) but we also have a kick ass planetarium that is managed by one of the new Star Gazers. So, at least if you are in N Florida, it could work.

No

[petes_PoV]

I can only spend maybe 10 hours a week on this

Since you already have a full life, something would have to give. The amount of time you estimate to be available would get to hobby level: the same as the other thousands of amateur astronomers in the country. But it's not enough to do any serious studying, get qualified or do research to a publishable quality.

Re:As a hobby yes, as a job NO

[Skarjak]

That's certainly something a lot of people are finding out. In times of economic troubles, fields like astronomy are the first to suffer.

As for the original question, I think you have more than enough time to learn physics and astronomy if you pick up some books and watch videos, to the point where you might be a pretty good amateur enthusiast. But contributing to the field? Maybe by doing some amateur astromy, you can help us spot objects. Lots of people are happy with that. I guess if you have good programming skills, you might spend some time learning physics to the point where you can run your own simulations, assuming you don't need a supercomputer to do so. 10 hours a week is definitely on the low side though, it's going to take a while to learn everything you need to know. Also, it's very unlikely you will get published unless you manage to be associated with a university. Maybe inquire into doing a part-time degree or something? The reality is that if you're not in the academic world, it's hard to contribute meaningfully.

I'm going to pick you up on one thing...

[DiamondGeezer]

Not to mention my mind isn't as sharp now as it was 20 years ago when I graduated high school.

Wrong! Unless you have early onset Alzheimer's, your brain can be as sharp or sharper than it was in high school. I'm 49 and doing 2nd year university math, physics and statistics and I'm MUCH better at any of them than I was when I graduated high school.

Suggestions:

1. Join an astronomy club (mentioned above, but I'd reinforce it). See the wonder, gain experience and confidence from others.
2. Buy a small telescope with a motorized mount and learn to do some astrophotography
3. Do a course or two on edX or coursera - the way to get better at running is to run, the way to get better at science is to do science.
4. Reading books is good. Doing what the book says is much better.

Your mind is saying "feed me" so go feed it. You won't regret it.

Volunteer at the Uni

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite frankly, one of the options that I frequently see underrated is simply helping out a professor.

As an example, my local university (University of Central Florida) was hiring for a position in IT support for exoplanet discovery.
http://planets.ucf.edu/people/...
http://planets.ucf.edu/researc...

They were looking for someone with a background in IT/process managment/cloudsourcing to help with keeping their cluster computing infrastructure up/functional. I'm sure that they would have accepted a "volunteer" at 50% of the pay who had IT experience (even if only 10 hours/week).

You can get surprising results by simply walking down to the state college during a professor's office hours and asking if they would like any help. You will learn a lot, and will be more useful than the undergraduates.

I Am an Astrophysicist (but you do not salute me)

[floateyedumpi]

Here's your best and most direct path: use your IT skills to leverage an engineering job in the field. I have seen many technically inclined IT engineers and programmers take this route. Step-by-step:

• Immediately: take an introductory astronomy course at a local community college or continuing education program at your local university to demonstrate your interest,
• Then: assess your IT skills, and apply them directly to the support of an upcoming large ground- or space-based observatory. This is an especially sensible route if you do any database related work. The future of astronomy is big data and massive virtual observatories which collect together and make useful petabytes of information from a wide variety of facilities.
• Check the job listings at the American Astronomical Society, looking in particular for IT support positions where your domain knowledge would outrank that of PhD-trained astronomers (who learn to program "on the job" and rarely master grittier back-end systems). Realize that almost all existing and (especially) new astronomical facilities have substantial IT/engineering staff, and that your skills do not exist among traditional PhD scientists. Example: the LSST will produce 30 TB of data per night, which needs to be processed in semi-real time. Example #2: the incredibly successful Sloan Digital Sky Survey partnered with Microsoft database engineers to build its (at the time) state-of-the-art public-facing data archive. The late Jim Gray was instrumental in building the Sloan backend, and said his favorite thing about astronomical data is that it was "worthless" (by which he meant the usual access control layers were not necessary, freeing him to focus on much more rewarding and useful tools).
• Relocate to a mission control or operations center for the facility. These are often located at major research universities, or equivalent national facilities like the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, the National Radio Observatory in Charlottesville, VA, the Gemini Observatories (Hawaii/Tucson/Chile), etc. Advantage? You will very likely be immediately mixed in with groups of professional astronomers. You will be strongly encouraged to learn to speak their language, and to become more involved in the scientific aspects of the project. You will learn a great deal just through osmosis. You will likely be able to attend seminars, sit in on classes, bend the ear of willing faculty, etc. And the most significant advantage? You could be contributing directly to the forefront of astrophysics research within 3-5 years. Disadvantages: the pay might be somewhat less than similar background applied in the financial or health industries. Often the intellectual rewards bring talented engineers anyway. Also, may projects are time limited, so you positions are typically not permanent (but new projects are coming online all the time).