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Anonymous

Astrophysics/astronomy?

What is the difference between the study of astronomy and astrophysics? I heard there are two different degrees, is this true? If so, which one is more respectable, and what top colleges offer that degree?

Please explain thoroughly, I need informative answers.

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smilam

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In the undergraduate level astrophysics is harder and involves more math and physics. But as you get to higher levels I don’t think they’re very different. The biggest difference is probably the physics and math required for astrophysics is a bit higher level. I took an honors astrophysics course at University of Michigan and it wasn’t very hard. You did a little bit of differential calculus and other than that mostly algebra.

We helped kids in astronomy and it was unit cancellation type math.

I also took a general relativity course, and in either field you’d probably need to be very familiar with the laws of gravity, so you’d be looking at various forms of calculus, vector and tensor analysis and a lot of various math like spherical coordinates.

Any school that has a decent science program will probably have a good astrophysics program, but I don’t think there are very many big schools for astronomy. Michigan’s program was small, but I’m sure they do a ton of work with the physics program and that was very well sustained.

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4 years ago
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