Career in Astronomy and Cosmology
#Universe
#Cosmos
It is easy to talk about person, place or thing around us, but not so easy as everyone finds it hard to talk about "UNIVERSE" and beyond our planet the EARTH.
Do you ever thought, you are fortunate enough to be dweller of the Earth? Do you know, Earth is the only planet till now which has favourable condition for sustaining life?
We are frequently hearing these days, universe is expanding, Mars has potential to sustain life, asteroid will hit the earth or it will pass very close to Earth and other celestial events, how and who interpret and explore these things and what we call them who practices these profession. We will come to know in further paragraphs. But, may sceptical people retorts,why we are wasting our money on such irrational things as compared to more pressing issues like poverty, poor health infrastructure, and many other needs but they fail to understand that the rate at which we are currently multiplying our population on Earth, we might require about 1.5 Earth to adjust our population, and to full-fill the need of 0.5 Earth we are doing such exploration for the Mankind.
The most of our above curiosities can be answered by Astronomy, Cosmology and Astrophysics. We the human being has always wondered about Sky and it's limitless boundaries.
What is Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology?
Our quest for knowledge, defines us the best as the Human being, we never seems to satisfy before knowing the unknown and this is the greatest driving force for this career.
Astronomy is the branch of Natural Science that studies celestial objects like stars, planets, galaxies, nebulae, comets and other celestial objects. This is a applied Science which uses the knowledge of Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in order to explain the origin and evolution of our universe and the one who do such works are known as Astronomers and everyone daily hears the news that the Astronomers have discovered a New Galaxy, Planet, stars and other object in our universe.
Astronomy should not be confused with Astrology, astrology is different stream which believes that human every day affairs are related to celestial bodies which at once seems totally absurd, it has no connection with Science.
Astronomy has been divided into different branches as ---
1.Theoretical Astronomy
2.Observational Astronomy
1.The main source of information about celestial objects is ELECTROMAGNETIC radiation. It may be categorised according to the corresponding region of the Electromagnetic Spectrum on which observations are made.Some parts of the Spectrum can be observed from the Earth while other parts are only observable from either High Altitudes or outside the Earth's Atmosphere. The sub-fields are--
1.Radio Astronomy-- Study of Celestial objects at radio-frequency.
2.Infrared Astronomy--Study of Celestial objects that are visible in Infra-red region.
3.Optical Astronomy--Study of Celestial objects with telescopes and photographs.
4.Ultra-violet Astronomy--Study of Celestial objects at Ultra-violet wavelength.
5.X-ray Astronomy--Study of X-ray observation and detection of astronomical objects.
6.Gamma-ray Astronomy--Study of astronomical objects and phenomena that emits Gamma ray.
2.Theoretical Astronomy
This branch uses several tools including Analytical models and Computational Numerical Simulation to interpret the various different aspect of our Universe.
The discoveries like Nuclear fusion in Stars, The Big Bang, Gravitation collapse are the sound discoveries of this field which has established it's firm foot with the test of time.
Astrophysics is the branch of Astronomy which uses the principle of Physics, mathematics and chemistry to guess the nature of the astronomical objects rather than their position or motion.The object studied under this branch are Sun, other stars, Galaxies, Extrasolar Planet, The interstellar medium and the cosmic microwave background that is why astrophysics is a very broad subjects, other branches are
a). Astro-chemistry--Study of the abundance and reaction of molecules in the universe their interaction with radiation.
b). Astro-biology--It is inter-disciplinary scientific field concerned with the origin, early evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.
c). Physical Cosmology--Cosmology could be considered as the study of universe as a Whole. The branch of cosmology that observes and explain the large-scale structure of the universe is known as physical cosmology. The Big Bang is like fundamental to modern cosmology.
d). Extra-Galactic Astronomy--The study of objects outside our Galaxy.
e). Galactic Astronomy--Study of Milkyway Galaxy and it's content.
f). Stellar astronomy--Study of stars and stellar evolution in our universe.
g). Solar Astronomy
h). Planetary Science
How to pursue career in this field?
The primary need is, you should have very strong command and understanding of the concepts of Physics,then next thing, you have to do under-graduation with Physics having sound understanding your concepts which will then open vast opportunities for you, and then you have to do Masters in Physics after that you can do research in Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology with handsome allowance and Packages.
Some prominent institute in India-
1.Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital
2.Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore
3.Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune
4..Indian Institute of Science, (Bangalore)
5.Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram
6.Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, (Pune)
7.Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad
8.National Centre for Radio Astronomy, Pune
Nice 😃
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