Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
That is true... partly.
But, you need to invest a lot of time (as you mentioned in your post earlier).. and time is money.
To be able to spend your time on research, you have to have the steady income from whatever other source.
Not many people have that these days.
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Good comment, Bojan,
I seem to recall that someone once said that the astronomer should have a "tranquil and monkish existence".
(which equates to : no non-astronomical disturbances to destroy one's focus on astronomy, and lots of time to work consistently on astronomical projects)
Me, personally, I have retired early so as to be able to practise my several scientific hobbies!
(My project for the first quarter of this year is studying books about marsupials!)
It is all a matter of persistence and enthusiasm, which has taken a lot of amateurs a long way in science.
Oh, and Josh, it looks like you are going to have a busy time if you want to learn astronomical science as well as engineering. As I mentioned, I know of some people who wrote scientific papers in astronomy
while they were still doing their BSc...... so it looks like it's time for you to get to work! (As mentioned before, I can make some recommendations for astronomy books which can get you to the upper undergraduate level of astronomical knowledge; my own Very Extensive personal library of books on the ISM, star formation, stellar evolution, galaxies, etc., was designed for the express purpose of upgrading my knowledge to the equivalent of a graduate in astronomy)
(many of these books require the reader to have at least one year of university physics and maths, or preferably two years of physics; alternately, she/he should have the equivalent level of knowledge obtained from elsewhere)
cheers
Robert