Take online course may help. Just be sure that what are you pursuing for. Whether for a living or just to know more. For a living, i guess its very very hard to find a decent job unless you are willing to go to secondary level to spread the joy of astronomy to the kids thou' its not in the syllabus.
If its for your own pursue or thirst of knowledge, that will be highly advised.
Charlie
Beginner Astronomer Looking for Astro Courses in Singapore
Hello Guardius
I assume that you're asking about pursuing astronomy as an academic option in Singapore, e.g. doing astronomy at undergrad or grad level. The last I checked, NUS does offer some astrophysics/introductory astro modules. If you have time, you could probably crash the lectures... I don't think the lecturers would mind. Besides that, I don't think local universities have any formal astronomy related programs. Of course, self-studying's great too. The libraries are good resources (though the texts in the libraries are a bit dated and not so current anymore), and so are online course notes you can find from the websites of many universities. Distance learning courses are available on the net, but these are expensive.
If you're thinking about doing astronomy in a university, the US would be a good place to look. I chanced upon this link a few days ago:
http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/sas/gradschools.html
It has a list of universities in the US that offers astronomy at grad level. Most of these U's probably have undergrad astronomy programs too. (No, I'm not an astro major. I'm majoring in physics in some ulu, mountainous part of the States...)
You should also check out the career questions page recommended by carlogambino as it gives you a pretty good idea of what research astronomers do and the problems they face. Yes, you'll have to enjoy learning and doing physics and maths. In fact, astronomy undergrads at my school (and I believe it is the same elsewhere) take mostly similar courses as physics majors, along with other courses from the astro department. After graduation, most of them got to grad school.
Do note that to get accepted into graduate programs in astronomy in the US, one doesn't necessarily need have an undergrad degree in astronomy. Many astro grad students I know did physics for their undergrad (one of them did electrical engineering, but he's more of an exception). And then there are physics grad students who work for professors in the astro department. It's quite flexible because the two disciplines are really quite related.
So... if you're thinking of going into astrophysics/astronomy eventually, you could consider doing physics.
Career options... you can read all about that from Dr. Odenwald's website, but I'd just like to add that you can find jobs that have something to do with astronomy even if you weren't a physics/astro major. Astronomers need to work in teams! On huge projects - e.g. the Mars Rover mission, Cassini-Huygens mission, gravitational wave detectors, or some infrared telescope in Antarctica - they'll need people who would be, for example, writing code for the operating system in a space probe, or designing the electronics, or figuring out the types of material to use on certain equipment, or doing numerical analysis and simulation, or building the detectors, etc... the list goes on. Astronomers can't do everything by themselves. They need help from all engineering disciplines, so there are opportunities to get involved in astro-related jobs even if one is not from the physics/astro field. There is satisfaction in realizing that a part of what you've designed or built has gone into space with the mission of furthering our understanding of the universe.
To digress a bit... wasn't there a 'space tourism company' that was considering Singapore for a base quite a long while ago? Does anyone know if they have decided on a location yet? Also, I thought Dr. Phil Chan specialized in particle physics? I might be wrong since I caught that many years back...
Clear skies!
I assume that you're asking about pursuing astronomy as an academic option in Singapore, e.g. doing astronomy at undergrad or grad level. The last I checked, NUS does offer some astrophysics/introductory astro modules. If you have time, you could probably crash the lectures... I don't think the lecturers would mind. Besides that, I don't think local universities have any formal astronomy related programs. Of course, self-studying's great too. The libraries are good resources (though the texts in the libraries are a bit dated and not so current anymore), and so are online course notes you can find from the websites of many universities. Distance learning courses are available on the net, but these are expensive.
If you're thinking about doing astronomy in a university, the US would be a good place to look. I chanced upon this link a few days ago:
http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/sas/gradschools.html
It has a list of universities in the US that offers astronomy at grad level. Most of these U's probably have undergrad astronomy programs too. (No, I'm not an astro major. I'm majoring in physics in some ulu, mountainous part of the States...)
You should also check out the career questions page recommended by carlogambino as it gives you a pretty good idea of what research astronomers do and the problems they face. Yes, you'll have to enjoy learning and doing physics and maths. In fact, astronomy undergrads at my school (and I believe it is the same elsewhere) take mostly similar courses as physics majors, along with other courses from the astro department. After graduation, most of them got to grad school.
Do note that to get accepted into graduate programs in astronomy in the US, one doesn't necessarily need have an undergrad degree in astronomy. Many astro grad students I know did physics for their undergrad (one of them did electrical engineering, but he's more of an exception). And then there are physics grad students who work for professors in the astro department. It's quite flexible because the two disciplines are really quite related.
So... if you're thinking of going into astrophysics/astronomy eventually, you could consider doing physics.
Career options... you can read all about that from Dr. Odenwald's website, but I'd just like to add that you can find jobs that have something to do with astronomy even if you weren't a physics/astro major. Astronomers need to work in teams! On huge projects - e.g. the Mars Rover mission, Cassini-Huygens mission, gravitational wave detectors, or some infrared telescope in Antarctica - they'll need people who would be, for example, writing code for the operating system in a space probe, or designing the electronics, or figuring out the types of material to use on certain equipment, or doing numerical analysis and simulation, or building the detectors, etc... the list goes on. Astronomers can't do everything by themselves. They need help from all engineering disciplines, so there are opportunities to get involved in astro-related jobs even if one is not from the physics/astro field. There is satisfaction in realizing that a part of what you've designed or built has gone into space with the mission of furthering our understanding of the universe.
To digress a bit... wasn't there a 'space tourism company' that was considering Singapore for a base quite a long while ago? Does anyone know if they have decided on a location yet? Also, I thought Dr. Phil Chan specialized in particle physics? I might be wrong since I caught that many years back...
Clear skies!