Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaps
The maths components of these courses are woefully inadequate. Professional astronomy is more maths than anything. Without a thorough grounding in advanced mathematics and an ability to compute and reduce at the highest levels, you can never even pretend to be a "real" astronomer. Like it or not, it's a fact. Most graduates of these courses have what some refer to disparagingly as "Omni" or "New Scientist" educations: They can blather on like an expert about astronomical topics at a populist-level but, as soon as any mathematical ability is required, their whole shtick falls apart.
There are no shortcuts to the big league.
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Some have no intention of wanting to duke it out with the big boys, so they don't need that level of maths. You'll find that most people who end up doing astronomy have come from a maths/physics background in their undergrad course and have only touched on astronomical subjects in graduate school. They could've used their undergrad degree for any science based career, if they so chose. Even quite a few outside of science. Despite the content of such courses, they're relatively generalist in their application. That's why we have graduate courses. A course is only as well regarded as the quality of the graduates that are matriculated and the teaching standards of the faculty/department running those courses. Even so, calling such courses as mentioned "Omni" or "New Scientist" is just elitist and very disparaging. Just a case of looking down one's nose at the students who don't do the "traditional" thing. Yes, some are generalist and not heavily maths based, but some others aren't. Many of the people who graduate from these courses never intended to go onto PhD's, but some have and now they have careers as astronomers. Some may decide to stay as masters and teach at colleges, and not every lecturer I've encountered at uni has had a PhD. Quite a few have only had masters degrees. Not even all astronomers have PhD's. Others may go onto teaching at high school, whilst some may go into industry, or even the military in some countries (especially the US).
Astronomy is like any other field of science these days....it's become highly specialised in any number of related fields within the subject and some require a better handle on maths than others. So, given the diversity of fields within the subject as a whole, what would you define as being a "real" astronomer????. You can say the same about any science. Physics, especially.
Put it another way....what is the strictest definition of an astronomer. One who studies the stars, am I not right??. If so, then anyone at this site, no matter their levels of knowledge, can be classed as an astronomer. And I can tell you now that there are quite a few "amateur" astronomers that have a much better knowledge of the night sky than many of the so called "professional" astronomers that grace the halls of the unis and observatories around the world. The only difference between the two is the level of specialised education (or more precisely, the little piece of paper in the photo frame on the wall) and the pay packet.