It’s time for school! The Astro101 series will cover some of the most important questions in astronomy. In today’s lesson, we’ll have: What does it take to have a career in astronomy? What does a professional astronomer actually do? What can you do to help astronomy? I discuss these questions and more in today’s Ask a Spaceman!
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Welcome back, class. This is our final session of Astro 101. Remember that student presentations begin next week and there will be a final exam. Check your syllabus for the schedule. I hope you've been taking notes in this series. We've explored all sorts of cool astronomy. We've talked about so many random astronomy words like right, ascension and declination and nucleosynthesis. We've talked about Galaxies evolving. We've talked about the future of the universe. We talked about stars being born. It's been a really fun series for me. I hope it's been fun for you. But before I return to your normal regularly scheduled random walk through astronomy, astrophysics and physics, that is your typical ASA spaceman experience. I wanted to close things out today by exploring astronomy, not astronomy, like we've done seven episodes on astronomy.
Astronomy is a job in the 21st century and not some abstract concept that's done by other people. And I want to talk about some of the challenges that face modern day astronomy, and I know that some of you who are listening are aspiring astronomers. I get a lot of questions on social media, especially high schoolers who are very stressed out, which I suppose is typical for the high school experience. But like they, they want to be an astrophysicist. They want to be an astronomer. They want to be a scientist, and they're trying to set things up because they're looking ahead to college and they say, How do I do that? What do what do I do? Tell me what to do so I can do that thing. I don't blame you for being stressed out. Some of you are parents of aspiring astronomers. I get a lot of questions. Not so much the questions from of parents of teenagers, because they're they're busy just trying to survive. They don't have time for emailing podcast hosts, but they have kids, little kids who are expressing an interest, saying, I love the stars and they're like, OK, you know what?
You're gonna be an astrophysicist someday. Let's ask Paul how to make that happen, and I know a bunch of you are neither You are, you know, happy being a productive member of society. You might be curious what astronomy actually looks like as a job and what the biggest challenges are currently facing. Like if you're going to be an astronomer. I want to talk about what you are likely going to work on. And probably if you're gonna listen to this episode 50 years from now. Probably still work on this is I know I spent a lot of time in this podcast describing the challenges that our previous generations of skywatchers face. Our ancestors struggled with the knowledge of the distance. The Andromeda, our ancestors puzzled over the nature of the planets. And I don't know, I just thought it was our turn. What are we struggling with? What are we puzzling over and how do we go about doing it professionally? So, first off, speaking of astronomy as a profession, the hardest question I ever get I get a lot of questions at this point in time when I record this episode.
Right now I have a backlog of over 500 questions. Keep them coming. But the hardest question I get when I give a public talk or a presentation or even email questions to the show is how can I be an astrophysicist and it's hard for two reasons. One every path is different. And the second reason is this is a little awkward to admit, but there are no jobs, so the first part first because it comes first. The general broad brush story of how a person goes from being random high schooler to professional trained astronomer or physicist or astrophysicist is that in high school you make sure to take some math classes you take as high level math classes as you can like we're talking calculus. Here is not exactly a barrier because you'll learn a lot of calculus in college, but it certainly helps. So you want to focus on the math. Don't worry about like the the high school science classes, because they have very, very little to do with training as an astronomer, and no one really cares about them.
So you take try to take as much math in high school as you can. Don't worry. If you're not the best at math, you don't have to be at the top of your class in math. I do not consider myself the best mathematician in the world or even amongst my peers. Math is really, really, really hard for me. Uh, but you know, you can still do it because physicists need to have a lot of skills. Math is one of them, but it hasn't have doesn't have to be the top. Then you go to college in an undergrad program, either in physics or astronomy or something related to that. You can even do engineering if you want towards the end of your college experience and you learn a lot of math, you take a lot of classes and you learn some of the basics of physics. If you want to continue in this track, you compete for grad schools. You do have to compete. There will be more people applying for grad school in physics and astronomy than there will be open positions. Usually, there are many more physics grad students in a typical university or college than there are in astronomy.
Sometimes the astronomy department might be absorbed by the physics department, like they just have, like a half dozen astronomers hanging around in their section of the hallway. Sometimes it's a unified Department of physics astronomy. Sometimes it is separate between physics, astronomy. Sometimes there's even a separate astrophysics department, but you want to get into grad school to try to earn your PhD master's degrees aren't really things in physics and astronomy. I mean, yes, they exist. Uh, but that's not the degree needed to become a professional physicist or astronomer. Typically, typically, you need a PhD, and so you're gonna compete, and you're gonna try to get into as good of a grad school as you can, because at ultimately in the at the end of the day, you want connections, you want references, you want to be working on big, exciting projects. And the big exciting projects go to people who are well known. Go to universities who are well established. So you want to get into as good of a program as you can.
In order to do so, you usually need some level of undergraduate research. You need some letters of recommendation, you need good grades and you need to take an exam called the GED or graduate. Oh, no, sorry. GRE Graduate record exam consists of a math section of vocab thing section I barely remember, and then 100 multiple choice physics questions that are very, very tough, and you have to get as good a score as you can. It's kind of stinky that departments use it as a filter that. Oh, we won't consider any candidates with a score lower than this like it's unfortunate, but that's also the way it is. Once you're in graduate school, you'll take classes for a while. The graduate school grades don't really matter. Here. Nobody cares. What matters is you're probably going to have to take a qualifying exam, usually at the end of your first or second year. This is slowly being phased out, but it's still present in a lot of universities. It's It's an incredibly hard, multi hour multiday test that lets you stay in grad school, but if that sounds stressful, it's because it is.
But it's not something you have to worry about. Now, Shortly after classes begin, you will find a research advisor and you'll start working with them. And then it's more of a job in grad school. The last, like two thirds of grad school, is not about classes. It's about being a research assistant assistant in a group for an advisor doing work, learning how to be a scientist. Science. Modern day science is one of the very few fields of human activity that really does work on an apprentice based system your mentor, your advisor will be your guide for half a decade and teach you personally how to be a scientist, how to actually operate in science and in your chosen sub field of science. And this is true for all science, and it is true for physics and astronomy. After you get your PhD and everyone shakes your hand in celebrates, you go off to get a postdoc. Postdoc is short for short for postdoctoral research appointment. These are positions that last for between 2 to 5 years.
It's a temporary research position. It's paid Gig Grad school itself in physics and astronomy is usually almost always paid as well. You do not directly pay tuition. Instead, you will be paying for your tuition by either teaching throughout your career as a grad student or by having money from your research advisor to hire you and and they will pay for your tuition in addition to a stipend. So that's usually paid. It's just a job. Very weird job with long hours, but it's a it's a job, and then a post doc is another job. It's a temporary research appointment to like, see if you're up to now see if you're good enough to get a independent research. You're like, OK, like you finally left under the wings of your advisor. And now fly Little birdie, and then you're gonna do another post, Doc. There are typically at least two post doc positions involved before you're considered qualified enough for a faculty position, at which point you will begin competing for faculty positions when you compete for those, and there will be more people competing at every stage in this game.
There are more people applying than there than there are open spots. The biggest pinch is at that postdoc to faculty transition. Once you get a faculty position, it will be 10 year track. If you're at a big research university, you'll have five years to prove yourself. You've got to get around a million dollars in Grant. You gotta write around like I don't know, 20 papers or have your name on 20 papers you got. Advise grad students. You gotta do the whole thing. You have five years in order to get tenure. Once you have tenure, you're like in you got a job for the rest of your life, assuming you actually show up to teach. If you're not a major research university, the 10 year review might be shorter. Might only be a couple of years, in which case it will focus mostly on your teaching abilities and presence and less so on your research. That's up to the university where you land at once. You are faculty, like and when you're a grad student, you're gonna do a lot of research and a lot of independent research, like your advisor. And I remember this. My advisor, uh, Paul Rick at the University of Illinois and been a champagne at the beginning felt like a teacher and then at the end, felt like a colleague.
And that's how they treated, you know, he At the beginning he treated me like a student. And at the end of my grad student experience, I was his colleague. We worked together. You really do grow to become an independent researcher. And then you do a lot of research as a postdoc that the vast majority of your time as a postdoc will be devoted to research. And then you get a faculty position. You basically stop doing research. You become more of a middle manager. You're gonna be hiring grad students. You'll be advising them. You'll be teaching classes. You'll be competing for grants. You'll be serving on committees. You'll be doing admin work. You will have very, very little time left for personal research. Most of the research that happens will be done in your name by people that you hire. So you're a research boss. The joke is, and I made up this joke that long term. Nobody does science because either you leave the field or you become a faculty member, in which case you have no time left for science. You are highly likely to work in a collaboration.
Likely your advisor will be a part of a collaboration in physics and astronomy. It might be a small one of just, say, a few people. It might be a large one of a few 100 people, but your advisor will have a network of people that they work with. You will start working with them there. There really are no lone wolves in astronomy and physics anymore. Yes, there is the occasional single author paper, and by the way, as a grad student, you will write a few papers. A handful of papers, they will end up becoming your thesis, your dissertation. As a postdoc, you will write a few more papers. The success of your papers will be how your peers judge you and your ability to get positions. You will likely write papers with other people. Either you will be the first author leading a bunch of people on this particular paper, or you will be one author among many, helping someone else lead a paper. But no one. Yeah, there are single author papers, but no one's really working in a vacuum anymore. So low, it just doesn't happen. The problems are too big. They're too complex. I'll get to that in a little bit. You might end up depending on your specific interests.
You might classify yourself as an astronomer or as an astrophysicist or as a cosmologist. You might call yourself a theorist or an observational or a computational list. There might be some combination of the above that changes with time. For example, I started in grad school as a computational astrophysicist because I was working on galaxy clusters and a relationship with black holes using giant simulations as post I was more of a theoretical cosmologist. But I also dipped into pure astronomy and developing methods for radio telescopes like So, Like you, you'll float in and out of various categorizations. If this all sounds like a dream come true, then go right ahead. That lifestyle isn't for everyone, which is a good thing because almost nobody ends up as tenured faculty. Before I continue, though, I wanted to let you know about our amazing sponsor for today's episode, and that's the great courses. Plus, and the reason I really like them is I love learning, and so do you. Learning is fun, and it's empowering and I.
I just feel better when I know something and check this out. I would really love for you to watch how science shapes science fiction. It is like science fiction is awesome. I pay. I watch all sorts of science fiction shows and read all sorts of science fiction books and and seeing how real world science actually guides and shapes these amazing, creative, imaginative worlds that these creators make is just so much fun. This course will guide you through all of that, and there's so much more with the great courses. Plus you get unlimited streaming on courses, covering basically every aspect of humanity. And there's so there's something for everyone. And when you download the great courses plus app, you can watch and listen on the device as you're choosing, including the one you're using right now to listen to this show. So go to the great courses, plus to find out how you can Emig in your brain. That and I have a special URL for you, where you can get an entire month of unlimited access for free.
That's the great courses plus dot com slash spaceman. That's the great courses plus dot com slash spaceman. That's right. I use the phrase Emig in your brain, and I'm proud of it. The default expectation as a grad student and as a postdoc and as faculty is that you really don't have a personal life. You are working many, many hours a week way more than 40. You're just devoting your life to this profession. Why? Because there are so many people in graduate school and in undergrad getting their bachelors, getting their PhD S that if you decide not to spend the total devotion of your life to this field in this discipline. There'll be somebody who will, and they will have more papers out. They will have been to more conferences. They'll have a bigger network. They'll have better letters of recommendation and they'll get the job. It stinks. But that's how it is. By the way, I'm writing a book about all this I really am at at the time of recording. Right now, I am writing a new book.
It will be out eventually. You'll hear all about it. Trust me about, uh, some of the shortcomings of science. And one of the chapters is about how there are no jobs. There's roughly 10 PhD S produced for every one open faculty position. So less than one in 10 PhD S in physics and astronomy will actually end up in a long term research position, either in academia or at a government lab. That's it for physics and astronomy, about one in 10, which is a lot better than other fields of science but also a lot worse. And just like in general, like imagine if like one in 10 marketing majors did not end up in marketing like there'd be a problem there, and there is a problem here. The big cut-off happens when you're a postdoc. Generally, there's roughly roughly roughly about half of the people who get PhD S end up immediately, going on into industry and having wildly successful careers and half end up in a post doc.
Then about a small fraction of those end up in an actual tenure track position. That cut off happens by the time you're finished. Your second post, doc. You're somewhere in your mid Oldish thirties. There's a large fraction of scientists that get a PhD do two post docs, and then when they're in their mid thirties, find out that they cannot have a long term career in science and have to go do something else. In that time, you have moved many times you've gone off to college. You went somewhere else for your grad school, for your PhD. You went somewhere else for your first postdoc and then somewhere else for your second post, doc. And then you're applying to go somewhere else for your faculty position. So you're expected to move every few years. If this sounds like it might be hard to start a family, you are right. This is another problem on the flip side, however, your training as a physicist or an astronomer gives you so many marketable skills, like analysis, scientific rigor, mathematics, et cetera, like you have a PhD or even a bachelor's in physics or astronomy.
That means something that means you have skills that are very valuable and you're essentially guaranteed to get a job somewhere. The unemployment rate for physics and astronomy majors is essentially zero. It is one of the lowest, if not the lowest, unemployment rates of all college majors. And then once you have a PhD, you're like you can write your own ticket, you will get a job, a lot of physics and astronomy. People end up in finance. A lot end up in Silicon Valley a lot, uh, end up as consultants because once you understand complex systems and can use math to figure out those complex systems and to make predictions, that's like something a lot of businesses like to have. And in the meantime, even if you don't end up being a lifelong physicist or astronomer, you get to play with all sorts of cool toys. I mean important scientific tools of the trade you get to play with big, giant, ground based telescopes like CC or the ELT or the VL A or the GM RT or the Verona Observatory.
And sometimes they have cool names like the all Sky Automated survey for supernova or assassin across all sorts of wavelengths. Depends on your particular graduate school. Depends on your advisor. Depends on the collaborations that you're a part of. You might work with space telescopes or space probes. You might work with Hubble or TEs or Juno or plank. I mean, not plank anymore because it's decommissioned, but something like Plank that was the cosmic microwave background satellite, by the way again, across all sorts of wavelengths. Some of these collaborations might be huge. Some might be small. I personally the toys, looking back at my career, the toys I've used, I've used Spitzer Space Telescope I. I've used the Hubble. I've used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I've used Plank. I've used the very large array, and there's probably more that I'm forgetting you might get to play with neutrino detectors like Ice Cube in Antarctica, you might get to go to Antarctica. I have friends who have gone to Antarctica to run the operations there to detect neutrinos.
I need to do a neutrino episode with someone. Please ask. You might use gravitational wave detectors like LIGO or Virgo. Those are giant collaborations with lots of moving parts. You might be a part of it. You might be a part of patreon that's patreon dot com slash PM. Sorry, you might be part of amazing collaboration of space cadets who are keeping this show on the air and also enjoying perks like early access to episodes, private patreon only Q and a sessions and ad free ad free streams. If any of those sound good to you, go to patreon dot com slash PM. So if you just wanna keep science education on the podcast waves patreon dot com slash PM So and I really, honestly do really appreciate all the support I get every month. You might work directly with observations with those telescopes or those space probes or those detectors. You might also work with simulations like a lot of all of my graduate work was done on the computer. I was cooking up simulations of galaxy clusters in universes.
There are people. There are professional astrophysicists who have never looked through a telescope. I am not kidding. My post doc advisor, Ben Wendel. Amazing guy, Super smart guy. Very, very important. Big like cool guy. Works a lot on the cosmic microwave background, has never looked through a telescope. That's not his thing. He loves the problems. And so my graduate work. I didn't look through any telescopes in my graduate work. I. I did simulations, worked with computers, especially of I did a lot of simulations of magnetic fields, which I have not mentioned enough in this series. Do we need a special bonus class just on magnetic fields? So let me let me think about that one. You might work a lot with theory with chalkboard and whiteboard and pen and paper. You might do a lot solve a lot of math problems. And the math problems that you are trying to solve in physics and astronomy are not the homework math problems that you might know or remember from high school. The problems in homework are like we're gonna set up this artificial situation, but we already know the answer.
So we're gonna word everything just right so you can practice some technique. The problems we try to face in physics and astronomy that we solve with math. We don't know what the answer are, and we don't know what the best technique is. So it's like you get a problem. Like hm, we get these highly magnetized fluids being ejected from the accretion disk around a black hole. How does that affect star formation? Boom there. That's a science problem. That's a physics and astronomy problem. How do you write down? First, you have to decide what the right techniques are and just be able to write down the equations that might govern this situation that might best describe it and encapsulate it. And then you need to go and solve those. It's like writing, having to write your own word problems in math and then trying to solve it. But you have so many tools that you learned in undergrad and graduate school. You know, basic physics like momentum and energy. You know, atomic physics and quantum mechanics. You know, chemistry. You you'll know special relativity in general relative, you know, high energy physics.
You'll know thermodynamics. You'll know optics and radiation pretty much all of it. One of the cool things about astrophysics is that you get to use just about all of physics to solve your problems when you're trying to solve these issues, like how what happens at the end of a star's life? What was the early universe like? Like all these basic and fun astronomy and physics questions, you get to use all these tools and all this cool math to describe it. You're also gonna use your wits and cunning because it's a gauntlet out there, like nature does not give up her secrets willingly. She hides them, she whispers them, trying to solve these problems. Trying to make an observation that even makes sense is hard. Trying to make sense of that observation is hard. Trying to stitch it together and relate it to other observations is hard. Astronomy is hard, physics is hard, and it's also really fun and rewarding to come up with these answers.
When the math does work out, when you are able to explain a phenomena when you are able to make a prediction and it does line up with observations, it's a very, very satisfying feeling. Well, my favorite feelings in ever was when I would first make a discovery like I would discover something, I would reveal something. I would find something out. And for a very brief moment in time before I told my collaborators before I wrote the paper, before I did a conference presentation about it, I would be the only one in the world who knew that discovery. Imagine the first human being to see the Grand Canyon. For while they're the only person on the planet to see the Grand Canyon. So they get it all to themselves for just a little bit of time, and then they'll share it. But for a while, while it's all them all for them. And when I would make a discovery, find out something new, uncover something, reveal something, discover something. For a while, I was the only human being on the planet who got to know that thing.
That's a very privileged position, and it was a very special position. And then I would share and tell everyone. But for a while, II, I really liked that feeling. What will use these toys on these giant telescopes? These massive simulations and the simulations, by the way, might involve just running code or analysis on your computer. I should mention by the way I need to pause here and interrupt myself. All professional physicists and astronomers nowadays in the 21st century are amateur computer scientists. You will be using the computer. You will be writing code. You will be running code. It is just a part of the job. It's OK if you don't know computers all that well, right now it is. It is not necessarily a part of the training. Like physics departments are not sending their students over to the computer science department to learn computer science. You'll pick it up. It's just part of the thing. Whether you're doing giant simulations or analysis of observations or whatever, you will be interacting with computers a lot.
It's just how it works. In those simulations. The software you use might be on a little laptop might be on a bigger machine that your department has. It might be on a supercomputer, one of the most powerful computers in the world, depending on the problem. But you get to use a lot of toys. You get to use these big observatories and detectors. You get to use your wits and cunning. You get to use all these cool math and science knowledge, and you get to use computers. Where are you gonna work on? Well, here are my top unanswered questions in astronomy. These are in no particular order. I tried ranking them, but it just came out bad every time. So I'm just listing them. These are what I think. Like if you are going to be an astrophysicist or an astronomer, these are the categories of questions that you will work on. And I believe you will work on for the next at least half century, For example, you're gonna work on dark matter and dark energy. You're gonna try to figure out what the universe is made of. You might use giant surveys.
You might do surveys of Galaxies or of the early universe. You might do theoretical work trying to model dark energy or the early universe. You might be trying to figure out what the dark matter particle is, but you'll work in that category of dark matter and dark energy. You might work in the category of exobiology. You might be hunting for signs of life in our solar system or hunting for planets outside the solar system. We might use something like tests the satellite that's right now hunting exoplanets. You might use something like the Europa Clipper, a proposed flyby mission or an orbiter of the icy moons of Jupiter. You might make Hubble observations or ground based observations of our planets in our solar system or exoplanets around other stars hunting for signs of life. You might do planetary science. You might try to understand the history and formation of our own solar system and why the different planets are different because there's no easy answer to that.
So you might work with solar system probes. You might work with raw observations. You might do theory and simulations of how to turn a protoplanetary disc into a planetary system. You might work in solar physics, trying to understand the nature and dynamics of the sun. It's Corona. Lots of mysteries there how the sun, all the detailed bits of how the sun works. You might use the Parker Solar Probe. You might work with the Solar Dynamics Observatory. You might work on stellar or galactic evolution. You might look at how stars evolve, how they're born, their demographics. You might figure out how they die, how supernova work or how neutron stars work. You might work on how to find neutron stars. How to detect supernova. You might do theoretical work on how supernova work. You might do theoretical work on how Galaxies merge, how they relate to their giant black holes in their centers. You might work on how Galaxies evolve. Over billions of years. You might work on galaxy types.
You might do surveys or catalogs. Might work with the James Webb Space Telescope or the GAA telescope, or you might work on black holes themselves. How do they form? How do they merge? How did they get so dang big? You might work on the theory, the intersection of gravity and quantum mechanics. In reality, you're going to work on one tiny subset of these ideas. Like II. I worked generally on the problems of dark matter, and dark energy, generally very generally in grad school, is focused more on the nature of black holes and their interaction with the environment, their environment, not the earth environment. Uh, and then as a post doc, I focused more on dark matter, the nature of dark matter and dark energy. And then I turned to the problem of the evolution of the First Star. So, like I bounced around between these topics, but in each topic, I wasn't going out. I am going to solve dark matter once and for all. No, I worked on some tiny corner of the problem. And yet I I'll describe this more in my book, too, of of how, as science evolves, it gets more complex and the questions become tinier like you are not going to.
You're unlikely to be a part of the team that covers life on another planet. You're gonna work on some tiny corner of the problem, like working on the subsystem of the satellite or observational campaign of how to cleanly reduce the data or how to develop a fitting routine. It sounds mundane sometimes, but you know, most of every job is kind of mundane. But it's all driven by these big questions of dark matter, dark energy, exobiology, planetary science, solar physics, stellar and galactic evolution and black holes. It's like something in those along one of those subsets. But what if you don't make it as a professional researcher and or you never cared to start in the first place like then what do you do? What can you do to help? What like If you're a passionate about science and you love science, you love physics and you love astronomy. And either you've already chosen your career in your sense, or you just don't make it for one reason or another. I mean you, a lot of people start out as an independent researcher and then halfway through grad school, realize like, Wow, this isn't really for me.
I'm totally capable of it. But I also don't enjoy it. A lot of people realize that, and it's fine, like it's not for everyone and it shouldn't be not because it's like special, but just like any other job. At the end of the day. Physics and astronomy Being a researcher is a job, and not every job is for every kind of person. That's just the way reality is. But so let's say you don't make it. How can you still participate? How can you still help? You thought I was gonna start talking about Patreon, but I already did it. So Neer Neer First off, you can just spread a love of space. You can just talk about it. You can just share with people. You can organize star parties. You can talk non-stop about space and family gatherings. You know, born to tears with your love of space. I certainly do. You can be an amateur. Astronomy is like one of the few if only remaining field of science where amateurs make a difference, where amateurs contribute where they make regular important contributions.
Amateur Skywalker walks different podcast Amateur skywatchers find comets track Asteroids discover supernova Amateur astronomers, like write papers that become cited is the like. Could you say that about like high energy particle physics, like some kid in his backyard or her backyard discovered a new particle? That's not gonna happen. But discover a new asteroid or a new supernova or witness something that the professional observers didn't. And the reason that a amateur astronomers play a role is that we do not have enough observational capacity to capture every part of the sky at every moment of the day. At every wavelength, we just don't. So there's always room for more telescopes looking at the sky, capturing data, and amateurs play a big role.
So if you want to be interested in a amateur astronomy like grab a telescope and start observing. Look at some open problems where amateurs can help. You can also do citizen science things like Galaxy Zoo or Cosmo Quest, where you can classify Galaxies, you can classify and date crater features. It's super cool, like we need to make maps and we need a lot of science. And astronomy is based on classification so that we can understand differences. You can participate. You don't have to be a professional. You can just be you and and be a part of this wonderful exploration of the universe that we find ourselves in. And with that, at the end of our class I charge you, I challenge you to go out and explore. Thank you so much for listening. I would like to thank my top patreon contributors this month. That's patreon dot com slash PM Sutter. It's Matthew K, Justin Z, Justin G, Kevin O, Duncan M, Coy D, Barbara Kay, Neuter Dude, Robert M, Nate H, Andrew F, Chris L, Cameron Nalla Aarones, Tom B, Scott M and Rob H is their contributions, and everyone else is that really does keep the show going.
That's patreon dot com slash PM Sutter. I'd like you to keep asking questions. Hashtag ask a spaceman. Ask a spaceman at gmail dot com. Go on the website. Ask apace man dot com. Send me questions. Keep the show going. You can also go to iTunes and leave a review. You can also just recommend the show to someone who might have a love of astronomy or didn't know that they had a love of astronomy. And I'll see you next time for more complete knowledge of time and space.