Astronomer Education Requirements

There's several requirements to becoming a certified astronomer.The main ones being in education. First you must go to college for four (or maybe five) years to get a bachelor's degree in sciences of astronomy (duhhh). Then, you have to get good grades and take a standardized test in your senior year, but what really makes you an astronomer is your research experience in that field: internships for different scientific institutions, apprenticeships for different elite groups of scientific researchers, etc. Also be alert to opportunities like the Research Experiences for undergraduate programs, where you work at another university for a summer, or the summer student programs at the National Astronomy Observatories. And, here comes grad school: taking more classes at first, and then shift into doing more research, and writing a doctoral thesis. You'll probably get some experience in front of a classroom by being a teaching assistant. That's what is required to become a certified astronomer.