• Question: What different kinds of jobs can you get that involve astronomy?

    Asked by 354diej29 to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 9 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 9 Jun 2017:

      I’m not sure.

      I work on epidemiology – that is the study of patterns of disease. Do you mean jobs that involve epidemiology?

    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      I wonder if this question has strayed into our zone by mistake. There is not much role for astronomy in the control of epidemics or infectious disease, although if space travel becomes common place then our definition of imported infection may have to be broadened! Watch out for those space bugs!!

    • Photo: Rebecca Corkill

      Rebecca Corkill answered on 10 Jun 2017:

      Hey, I am not an expert in astronomy. But a quick google search gave me this:

      https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/job-profiles/astronomer

    • Photo: Liz Buckingham-Jeffery

      Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 11 Jun 2017:

      I have a friend who works in astronomy at Warwick University. His job is to look for exoplanets, which are planets outside of our solar system. So ones that orbit other stars, not our sun. The first step to finding an exoplanet is to collect data using a massive telescope. So he regularly gets to travel to fun parts of the world to do this. Then he brings the data back and tries to understand what it is showing. He uses maths and statistics and computer programmes to see if the data shows an exoplanet exists.

      It is actually really interesting: the maths and statistics and computer programmes he uses are exactly the same type of maths and statistics and computer programmes that I use to look at disease data! That is one of the things I like about maths, it is useful for so many different purposes.

      I hope that was helpful!

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