List of Resources for Students
One of the primary challenges in starting out in a field is to have a mental map of existing resources, understanding how to access different things and the origin of some references. This list is by no means comprehensive and is mostly intended to fill gaps in knowing where to find certain information.
Learning the Basics (in Class or Research)
- astroteaching.github.io – site I maintain with collected open source course materials
- Taotie – Song Huang’s site where he curates research resources
- Astronomy as a Field: A Guide for Aspiring Astrophysicists
Presenting Research
- List of astronomy conferences maintained by the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre
- Astrotalks – David Hendriks’ list of astronomy talks, which may help as example presentations
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- many talk series hosted on YouTube (see a list of some under astroteaching.github.io/resources)
Finding the Next Position
There are lots of different places to find job postings. Below are two of the most commonly used:
- AAS Job Register – almost all astro jobs will be posted on “the Job Register”
- Academic Jobs Online – some physics positions will only appear on AJO
I’m not necessarily suggesting that it’s a healthy practice to compare profiles, but it can certainly be edifying! Rumor pages exist for other disciplines and people sometimes maintain informal rumor boards elsewhere, but these links go to the most frequently used astro sites:
- physicsgre.com – find the graduate admissions rumor mill under “Prospective Physics Graduate Student Topics”
- The Grad Cafe
- Rumor Mill – for postdoc/faculty/research scientist job news
There are also separate rumor sites for HEP-Ex and HEP Theory postdocs and faculty, which may have relevant overlap for certain positions.
Finding Papers and Data
- SciX – the successor to NASA/ADS which still indexes arXiv and journals but now for more disciplines
- INSPIRE – ADS, but for high energy physics, so sometimes better/more complete for cosmology and astroparticle literature
Note: I will eventually populate this section with more links to large data repositories.
Research Funding/Opportunities
If you’re an undergraduate, be sure to keep an eye out for REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) and similar programs, which are usually advertised in the fall/winter. Prestigious summer research opportunities can translate not just to time to do focused work on a project, but also to key contacts as you apply for graduate positions and beyond.
It is also good practice to reach out to faculty and postdoctoral fellows directly about research opportunities1. Not everyone will take undergraduate students
There are some fellowships/awards that are considered standout (within US academia):
- NSF GRFP
- Astronaut Scholarship
- Barry Goldwater Scholarship
- Brooke Owens Fellowship – for women in aerospace, but held by many now-astronomers
If you’re a graduate student, apply early and often for fellowships to fund your own research! There are awards like the NSF GRFP and NASA FINESST that everyone with eligibility will apply to on roughly the same timeline, but also look for opportunities through other organizations – many awards will be through philanthropic or education-focused groups, but some will also be from computing or quant finance firms that want to cultivate the next generation of talent. Look at the CVs of people to whom you look up in order to get a sense of the full breadth of possible awards.
There are also numerous predoctoral programs that expressly encourage you to get research experience outside of your home institution. These fellowships can help expand your research network and broaden your research interests.
- CCA Pre-doctoral Program
- IPAC Visiting Graduate Research Program
- ESO Studentship Programme
- KITP Graduate Fellowship Program
Sharing Code/Data
Humor
Much of (astro)physics shares a common cultural lexicon, some of which comes from popular media and some of which comes from relatively niche webcomics. If you have not already, you will certainly encounter references to xkcd (so essential to science that it has its own matplotlib module) and you will likely also see – and possibly relate to – PhD Comics.
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Quick note based on increasingly frequent recent experience: In applying to positions or just reaching out to people with whom you would like to work, it serves to remember that you’re just starting out. Approaching learning with humility (a good rule even as you get more senior) is critical. If you’re asked to propose a project, suggest something feasible (or acknowledge that you’re not yet sure what is feasible!); if you’re asked to describe your research interests, be up front about the scope of your experience.
Sharing grandiose goals (I won’t include specific examples to avoid embarassing anyone, but think along the lines of “I have discovered a new method to do X basic measurement, which I would like to test” or “the field is inefficient, and I will revolutionize it with my brilliance”) is (rightly!) read as disrespectful of the collective knowledge of an entire field and will demonstrate that you understand little of the actual science. There is no reasonable chance (and no historical precedent even when science had a much lower barrier to entry) that a completely untrained novice could uncover something so fundamental that every professional researcher had missed. (See also xkcd #1758.)
I wouldn’t normally feel the need to note this as specific advice as it used to be a much more rare occurrence, but I have encountered more students proposing infeasible projects in the last months than I have in the preceding years. I don’t think people are suddenly deluded about their abilities, so I attribute this mostly to students relying heavily on LLMs for communication and the “construction” of ideas. It is always better to ask for help (from a real person with expertise in the field!) than to offend in an attempt to come across as more impressive than you are. There’s plenty of time to become impressive once you actually know what you’re doing. ↩