Making Your Way to Professional Astronomy in the Philippines

Astronomy is one of the sciences where almost anyone can get fascinated with. There are many who just gaze at the night sky in complete wonder and amazement. Sad to say, astronomy education in the Philippines is not that known. One of the reasons behind this is the disadvantage in the Philippines of the separation of all the islands in the archipelago, which in turn makes it hard for information to go around. As I began taking my steps to professional astronomy I realized that very few people are aware of an astronomy degree here in the Philippines.

Rizal Technological University is a school in Mandaluyong that offers astronomy education. They have three programs - an undergrad degree in BS Astronomy Technology, a grad school Diploma in Astronomy, and a MS Astronomy. They are the first and only school in the Philippines to offer astronomy (I believe I have a post on this which I will check later). I heard about this via the Astronomical League of the Philippines.

Being in an archipelago, you have to keep track of the latest in Astronomy and how to go about it via the internet. Through the web, you can make contact with the different Philippine Astronomy clubs. You can check them or the PAGASA web site for news on what's in the night sky. For those who pursue astronomy outside Luzon, specifically Manila, you may have a hard time getting in touch with these groups, however keep note that you have better sky conditions. Light pollution and pollution for that matter is a hindrance from the big city so don't be down - you can actually see more than we want.

Astro-Journal 01

Physics – Astrophysics – Astronomy

Let’s start by defining these three terms:

Physics – science concerned with the laws that govern the structure of the universe, and the forms of matter and energy.

Astronomy – astronomy is primarily an observational science concerned with the motions, positions, distances, distributions, and physical conditions of celestial objects

Astrophysics – the study of physical properties and composition of celestial objects using the known laws of physics. In the simplest sense, astrophysics is physics + astronomy.
It began with the development of spectroscopy in the 19th century, which allowed astronomers to analyze composition of stars from their light. Astrophysics view the universe as a vast natural laboratory in which they can study matter under conditions of temperature, pressure, and density that are not unattainable on Earth.


I wanted to take astronomy as a major when I get to college, but since astronomy wasn’t offered in schools I knew, I took the closest thing – Physics. I could remember swiftly passing through astronomy topics in our general science in high-school, and not reaching astro topics in our high-school physics. This made me crave for more knowledge on astronomy since I was really interested. I could even remember taking my fourth year classmates to the physics department and encouraging them to take the course with me.

Taking physics as a major, I get introduced to various concepts and topics covered by physics. Most of the topics or fields we cover are actually used in astrophysics and astronomy. Like physics, astronomy covers essentially the same thing, only with focus outside our planet. If you were not really interested, you wouldn’t see the strong connection between physics and astronomy: how optics and radiation are the strongest tools in measuring and observing the celestial, how matter and gravity affect everything, how temperature and luminosity describe to us the nature of stars, how nuclear energy give power to the stars and galaxies, how relativity makes us understand black holes, how particle physics tells us where all the matter in the universe comes from, how practically most of the knowledge we have on astronomy is defined by the laws of physics
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As of now, I am an amateur astronomer who is still getting in the hang of knowing the wonders of the night sky. I wasn’t a first-section student in high-school and I’m not that fast with math. But, being a physics major does help me understand the concepts I encounter in my further readings.
How the science of physics and astronomy is intertwined really fascinates me.