Can anyone help finding information on Astronomy?

Roger

New member
I think i may be interested in trying to major in Astronomy, does anyone know where i can find information on what schools have the best astronomy programs? What kind of jobs you could have with astronomy? How much you get paid for those jobs? How tough the competition is for landing a job in the field, anything like that would help!
 
Here's the thing about astronomy - there really aren't any jobs in the field unless you want to teach college or do research, and you need a PhD in astronomy to do that. And if you're going to go to grad school for astronomy, you should be majoring in physics, not astronomy, for undergrad. Astronomy, math, and computer science courses are useful/necessary as well, but physics is essential for getting into grad school. So you could go anywhere that offers a physics major, and that's most colleges. I'll list the best grad schools for astronomy/astrophysics below, and any of these would be great for undergrad as well - as would many other top colleges and liberal arts colleges.

Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, CalTech, Stanford, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, U Washington, U Arizona, UT Austin, Rice, U Hawaii, UMass Amherst, U Wisconsin, U Virginia, Purdue, Notre Dame, Boston U, GA Tech, U Chicago, and many more.

Astronomers work for colleges and universities, national labs (NOAO, NSO, NRAO, LLNL, LALN), and NASA. They make between 60k and 120k a year with a PhD - it won't make you rich. At the moment, there are very few jobs available, but hopefully that will get better with the economy.
 
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