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IMHO,

1. Maths

2. Physics (including GR, if you want to, quantum isn't very aplicable yet and most don't yield significant observation)

3. Spherical trigonometry (if you're into observation, the "astro-" part)

4. Lots of general knowledge ("astro-")

5. Massive computers ("astro-")

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5 minutes ago, YNM said:

...quantum isn't very aplicable yet and most don't yield significant observation...

That stood out to me as well, and I was going to say something similar, but then you've got all sorts of things about vacuum foams and hawking radiation and line spectra...and...and.. etc.

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2 hours ago, Mountain Delights said:

Required materials for Astro-physics:

  1. Mathematics
  2. Physics (Quantum,Mechanical)

 

Is these are the first requirement?

Hmm, Astro means you get into space, before you can do that you need to get through the atmosphere.

First issue is propulsion systems, SRBs are pretty much alchemy to advanced chemistry, physical systems of lH2 and l02 tanks, physical systems and engineering for the turbochargers and other systems in the rocket engine
Second issue it flight control, which means that you probably need a reliable gyroscope, gyrostat, which was invented by Lord Kelvin who was a mathematician and pysicist.
Forth is in flight steering, this is electronics and aerodynamics, for example if you have steering vanes on your rocket.

V2 has a problem, it ran into Mach Compression on the way up.So I would say materials required for the pre-Astro phase are sensors and fast radio transmittors. For this one would need electronics. In addition to this you have system aerodynamics for dealing with Mach effects which is advanced aerodynamics.

These are needed to get into space. Once you are in space you need

Gyroscopes and reaction wheels. Computer systems that can keep track of orbit relative orientation.
Chemistry and advanced propulsion systems for the RCS
Chemistry, electronics, relativistic physics for the ION drive, also need photovoltaics or nuclear physics
Astronomy and advanced computer science for star tracking.
Advanced Thermodynamics for the maintenance of space craft temperature.
Global positioning and relativistic physics for determining inspace position.
Materials chemistry for design of space resistent parts (i.e. what happened to the Cannae drive when they tried to operate it in a vacuum).

Mathematics,
Chemistry, (requires physics and Mathematics)
Physics (Requires Mathematics to test physics you need chemistry)
Electronics (Chemistry, physics and mathematics)
Astronomy (itself, physics and mathematics)

THese are the basis.


 

 

Edited by PB666
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5 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Hmm, Astro means you get into space, before you can do that you need to get through the atmosphere.

You're getting "astro-physics" mixed up with a lot of other things...

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5 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

You're getting "astro-physics" mixed up with a lot of other things...

What good is theoretical physics if you can't apply it?

Note: The modern systems - Hubble space telescope, Kepler observatory, gamma-ray observatory, LISA, Mariner-1,2 Voyager 1,2-LISA.

 

 

Edited by PB666
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Right, can we clear one thing up to start, is this thread about space programs or astrophysics? It really isn't clear.

There are a huge number of different skill sets in a space agency, from design to fabrication to astrodynamics. On the other hand we have astrophysics which is a fairly well defined skill set and has very little to do with spacecraft or space agencies.

Secondly,

23 minutes ago, PB666 said:

What good is theoretical physics if you can't apply it?

Note: The modern systems - Hubble space telescope, Kepler observatory, gamma-ray observatory, LISA, Mariner-1,2 Voyager 1,2-LISA.

 

 

these are all great examples of things which theoretical physicists had nothing to do with.

Edited by Steel
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16 minutes ago, Steel said:

Right, can we clear one thing up to start, is this thread about space programs or astrophysics? It really isn't clear.

There are a huge number of different skill sets in a space agency, from design to fabrication to astrodynamics. On the other hand we have astrophysics which is a fairly well defined skill set and has very little to do with spacecraft or space agencies.

Secondly,

these are all great examples of things which theoretical physicists had nothing to do with.

I didn't say it didn't but try looking to the earliest stars in the Universe without Hubble.

One other point - lenses used for ground based telescopes - mathematics, chemistry, physics
Application - atmospheric science, meterology, astronomy
Making of lenses for space telescopes - material science (chemistry and physics).




 

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If someone said "I really like looking through telescopes, what does it take to become an astronomer", would you lead with "Glassmaking, lens grinding and mirror polishing."?

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1 hour ago, p1t1o said:

If someone said "I really like looking through telescopes, what does it take to become an astronomer", would you lead with "Glassmaking, lens grinding and mirror polishing."?

Do you want to be a stone age astrologer, iron age astrologer, early industrial stage astronomer, or a 3rd Millennium astrophysicist? I chose the last, your choice is up to you. 

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43 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Do you want to be a stone age astrologer, iron age astrologer, early industrial stage astronomer, or a 3rd Millennium astrophysicist? I chose the last, your choice is up to you. 

I think what p1t1o is trying to say is that being able to be an astronomer does not mean you have to be able to make a telescope, in the same way a race car driver does not need to be able to design and build a combustion engine

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4 minutes ago, Steel said:

I think what p1t1o is trying to say is that being able to be an astronomer does not mean you have to be able to make a telescope, in the same way a race car driver does not need to be able to design and build a combustion engine

Tell that to the astronomers that came up with the fix for the Hubble. You don't have to know optical physics to be a 3rd Millennium astronomer, but you would not be a very good one. Modern day astronomy, even ground based, is about spectrophotometer (strait out of chemistry and physics), atmospheric absorption and scattering curves, anomaly correction software, light integrator, etc. The instruments are doing most of the observing, the computer is doing the processing and the product comes out in bit image graphics, not the good ole silver-embedded negatives. Its pretty much the same in many areas, in the 70s we used to take plots and cut peaks and weigh them to integrate, from the 80s on they use electronic integration with multiple overlapping peak dissection. This stuff is physics, statistics, mathematics, computer science. You want to execute science beyond the cookbook level prepakaged machine science, you also need to be technically proficient in what you are doing. If I need to due composition analysis, I better know how to deal with diamond dust, clean a photospectrometer cell, calibrate a integrator, replumb an HPLC. do I need to do this everyday, no, but I better know enough to train someone, and I should know enough how to troubleshoot anomalies in the data stream or my data is not going to be worth ____. And so you see astromers looking at a Hubble image presentation they have to know enough about optics to deduce why in the hell there image is 50 time more fuzzy than it was supposed to be.

Think about what they are talking about with the James Webb Space telescope.

Designing a telescope to see in the low infrared range requires a knowledge of
Behavior of reflective lens and mirrors in space (don't forget hubble 1.0)
Behavior of the electronics in space (including sensors)
Cooling critical parts of the telescope to below 7'K.
Star tracking, system protection (as in avoidance of solar radiation on critical instruments), Scan windows.
Station keeping.
Infrared reflector composition.

This stuff is not mail-order astronomy, you get a pH.D. in astronomy you better know something about other sciences.

To question is the nature of science.
Question? Need to characterize objects very far away, so far away they are red-shifted 10x in wavelength, how does this differ from light telescopy? What will it require?
What are the likely pitfalls? What type of backup systems might be needed? How will material physics interfere (with very large objects there are vibrations and resonances).?

 

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13 minutes ago, PB666 said:

Tell that to the astronomers that came up with the fix for the Hubble. You don't have to know optical physics to be a 3rd Millennium astronomer, but you would not be a very good one. Modern day astronomy, even ground based, is about spectrophotometer (strait out of chemistry and physics), atmospheric absorption and scattering curves, anomaly correction software, light integrator, etc. The instruments are doing most of the observing, the computer is doing the processing and the product comes out in bit image graphics, not the good ole silver-embedded negatives.

I'm certain that while astronomers (and astro-physicists), learn all this, they will likely wind up specializing in a narrow-band of EMI that won't typically involve "light as we know it", and that narrow-band will be dictated by whatever telescope they have (any) access to.

It might be already automated to the point of being ignored, but the last I heard astronomy had changed into more of a computer networking issue (the best might be working for google for all I know) than an optical issue.  This was already changing over long before the web took over the internet, see Cliff Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg for details (basically a very 1990s story about finding a hacker in the dawn of the internet).

As far as the electronics courses, I'd expect that they would more likely be about digital signal processing and less actual circuits.  Note that my EE DSP classes had some early EE weedout courses as pre-reqs.  You need to be good at *everything* in astronomy (and presumably astrophysics), and there is fierce competition for telescope time.  Know what you are getting into (or at least be willing to fall back into computer networking.  You should be able to do that asleep to be in this field).

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