Astronomy
Exploring Time and Space

TIL that the seasons aren't caused by the varying Earth-Sun distance, but by the change of the relative tilt (i.e how high the sun appears in the sky)

r/telescopes I've heard Zhumel z130 is pretty good for a beginner.

Aside from astronomy, you could educate yourself, watch documentaries or take online courses about space. There's actually a free astronomy, space, and time course starting today that you can get a certificate for: https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro?

Perhaps in the future you might go to grad school for astrophysics or something space related to pursue a space career, its never too late.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro#syllabus

Check this or edx or similar. Professors from big universities teach here https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro?utm_source=gg&utm_medium=sem&campaignid=2087860785&utm_content=10-IBM-Data-Science-ROW&adgroupid=79675709431&device=m&keyword=ibm%20data%20science%20coursera&matchtype=b&network=g&devicemodel=&adpostion=&creativeid=375774778792&hide_mobile_promo=&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoJX8BRCZARIsAEWBFMI6y9CAptXfx3VP9WE_kHnt5JH63ipSnwCCO2mRbNe8UKGmS63eqrQaAo50EALw_wcB

Luckily, you don't need much to get started. Here is a free Astronomy text book in multiple formats. https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy

There is also this Coursera astronomy course that is also free https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro and has some good resources.

I have an undergraduate physics degree and took astrophysics as optional modules. Absolutely mindblowing, thou it was only the introduction course.

There are also so many introductory astrophysics courses now available online. One that I enjoyed immensely:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro

Undergraduate physics is mostly the same everywhere. Specialisation starts when doing post-graduate, ie honours, masters. When doing physics you will work in the academic, meaning teaching, writing articles, etc. Also currently the research budget in South Africa is very stretched. But the world is open for you. You travel the world doing conferences and can do you post-grad or post-doc anywhere in the world.

If all fails you can work in the financial sector, eg banks (most physics that leave academic for the big bucks), software developer (these days a large part of astrophysics is programming, so start to learn python) and education (high school teacher)

Also PM if you are interested in Antartica or have questions, I was a year team member. Also if you are doing physics you have very good chance to be able to go as a volunteer as you have priority. Will highly recommend it.

There is some mooc on coursera on the subject. A little on the astronomy side.

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• https://www.coursera.org/learn/astro/A basic. it's long in terms of video time, playback time... but cover a lot of subject.

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• https://www.coursera.org/learn/astronomy-technologyA technique : I love it when it talks about instruments and tools.

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• https://www.coursera.org/learn/data-driven-astronomyA data : I think that this one allows to have a good vision of the work.

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• https://www.coursera.org/learn/life-on-other-planetsA document : I've already done this one and the teacher is pretty wicked. A lot of materials are shown.

Some book are free on springer : https://link.springer.com/search/page/3?facet-content-type=%22Book%22&facet-discipline=%22Physics%22&package=mat-covid19_textbooks&sortOrder=newestFirst&showAll=true

Principles of Astrophysics : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-9236-8.pdf

Fundamental Astronomy : https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-3-662-53045-0.pdf