What does an Astronomer do?

Astronomers do many different things to aid space missions and even everyday life.  They study our own solar system as well as other stars planets and galaxies that are very far away.  Really, astronomy is the oldest of all the natural sciences dating back to our most ancient ancestors. 

            One of the coolest things about astronomy is it’s the only science in which one cannot really perform experiments.  You can’t weigh the sun for example, or smell it.  Astronomers can only observe the light coming from these distant bodies.  It is truly amazing how much astronomers are able to tell us about these stars and galaxies with nothing more to work with than the light.  It’s fascinating to me. 

            Most astronomers tend to focus more on a single branch of astronomy, such as stellar evolution or galaxy formation.  There are two types of astronomers.  There are the observational astronomers who use telescopes or spacecrafts equipped with advanced computer programs, which they design, to test predictions or new theories.  These theories come from the theorist astronomers.  Theorists do things like create a computer model of a star to try to understand physical processes that happen on the interior.

            Nowadays, astronomers don’t usually look through the eyepiece of a telescope to collect data, but use digital cameras with advanced optic technology attached to a computer to collect, sort, and analyze massive amounts of data.  Another thing astronomers have done is create the technology necessary to observe the skies in such an efficient and controlled manner.  Most an astronomers time is not spent observing, but rather trying to make sense of the observations and to be able to validate the spectra that they have observed.  However, these super expensive cutting-edge telescopes are not available at every university.  The observational astronomer spends a lot of time traveling around the world to use different telescopes and to chase rare astronomical events.  Almost all observing is done late into the night, so sometimes an astronomer’s circadian rhythm can get thrown off.

            Astronomy is a huge branch of science that applies many aspects of science to make sense of the massive amounts of data being collected by computerized telescope cameras.  Such an existential yet mathematically sound discipline is very rare and brings inspiration to myself and many students across the world.  Astronomy is sole reason why I chose to major is physics.