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Space & the universe

Natural Sciences

Studying matter, energy and everything beyond the atmosphere, from particles to galaxies.

This suits you if…

You enjoy the mathematics for its own sake and not only the subject matter, and you are content that the sky arrives as files to be processed rather than through an eyepiece on a cold night.

Look elsewhere if…

You want this specific field or nothing. Permanent positions are few relative to the number of people trained, the route to one runs through several fixed-term posts in different countries, and most graduates build their careers elsewhere. That is a good outcome, but not the pictured one.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Programming and statistics, far more than telescopes. Modern astronomy is largely computational: you work with archived survey data, write code to process it, and spend weeks establishing that a signal isn't an artefact of your instrument or your method. Observing time is scarce, competitive, and increasingly done remotely rather than at an eyepiece.

The catch

It's one of the narrowest job markets on this list. Permanent positions are few relative to the number of people trained, and the path to one runs through several fixed-term postdoctoral posts in different countries. Most physics and astronomy graduates ultimately build careers outside the field, which is a good outcome but not the one they pictured.

What people get wrong about it

That you spend nights looking through a telescope. You spend days in front of code, and the sky arrives as files. The romance of the subject is real, but it lives in the questions, not in the working conditions.

The jobs inside this area

  • Astronomer
  • Astrophysicist
  • Planetary scientist
  • Instrument / observatory specialist
  • Space-mission analyst

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Independence · Making thingsA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

A physics degree. Physics olympiads and astronomy challenges are how you test the fit.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Physics and maths as far as you can push them, and learn to program early. Python is the field's working language. Physics olympiads test exactly the kind of problem-solving the degree demands.

  2. What you study

    A physics degree, then a PhD for research work. The mathematical load is heavy and front-loaded; people who enjoy the maths for its own sake tend to thrive, and people who only love the subject matter tend to struggle in the middle years.

  3. How the first years actually go

    A PhD position, then postdoctoral work abroad. Alongside that, be aware that the skills transfer directly: large-scale data analysis, simulation, statistics. They go directly into data and quantitative work, and many people move that way by choice.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

13 countries · 14 cities · 29 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

  • Kazakhstan

    Named here: Nazarbayev University · Al-Farabi Kazakh National University · Satbayev University

  • Germany

    Named here: Technical University of Munich · Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich · Humboldt University of Berlin · RWTH Aachen University

  • Switzerland

    Named here: ETH Zurich · EPFL · University of Geneva

  • Netherlands

    Named here: University of Amsterdam · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  • United Arab Emirates

    Named here: Khalifa University · New York University Abu Dhabi · United Arab Emirates University

  • Türkiye

    Named here: Middle East Technical University

  • South Korea

    Named here: Seoul National University · KAIST

  • Japan

    Named here: The University of Tokyo · Kyoto University · Osaka University

  • Singapore

    Named here: Nanyang Technological University

  • China

    Named here: Peking University · Southern University of Science and Technology

  • Hong Kong

    Named here: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  • United States

    Named here: Massachusetts Institute of Technology · University of California, Berkeley

  • Canada

    Named here: University of British Columbia · McGill University

Without leaving home

2 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Take real public survey data from an observatory archive and try to reproduce a known result with your own code. Discovering how much processing sits between the sky and a published graph is the honest preview.