Why I'm quitting astronomy

Not so long ago I was living in Munich, Germany, working as a research astronomer at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Right now I'm in the process of giving that up and becoming a full-time yoga teacher. I'm not a blogger by nature (or a jogger or a hogger in fact), but I thought it might be good to put out there some of my thoughts and feelings during this transition and see what comes up.

In this first post I'm going to concentrate on a few of the reasons/thoughts/insights that have led to this big change in direction - my ongoing journey from studying the outer, physical Universe to the inner Universe of the body-mind.

I wasn't always into astronomy; I think the interest started when I was at school doing my GCSEs. I then had a wonderful physics teacher for my A-levels and that really sparked my interest to do astronomy at university. I think my interest in science, maths, and logic/reason is a genuine aspect of my innate personality, but looking back now, my interest in astronomy specifically may have had a strong influence from the need to look as far away as possible from real life here on Earth... My teenage years contained some fairly traumatic events and I think the idea of engrossing myself in the study of galaxies millions of light-years away was very attractive!

So I went to UCL in London to study Astrophysics. This turned easily into a masters (I don't mean the course wasn't hard, but I mean I barely considered there was an option not to carry on), followed by a PhD. I enjoyed the research and I had a great supervisor so it felt very natural to continue. At the end of my PhD I was 26, had never had a girlfriend, not relating so well with my family, and ready to move (escape) anywhere in the world for my first post-doc (generally 3-year contract positions to do research at a university or research institute).

At this juncture I went travelling by myself for the first time. I felt I was just about ready for it. I remember being on the beach at night in Costa Rica with some people I'd just met and enthusiastically describing the starry vista, the types of stars and their distance, the Milky Way, etc. My "audience" was pretty wowed and we ended up having the usual discussions about whether there's life out there, what a black hole is, and what came before the Big Bang. Sometimes you get a "what's the point?" attitude, but more often than not, people really are interested in space, "what's out there", and some of the fundamental philosophical questions about our existence! Anyway, what I was doubting at the time was whether doing astronomy as a profession was worthwhile or useful (what's the point?), and I remember specifically that that experience on the beach, and the reaction of those people to my enthusing, swung it. Despite my (probably not very genuine) wish to move anywhere for a post-doc, I took up a position at UCL (again) working with my PhD supervisor (the American term "advisor" is so much better - you don't catch me saying that very often...).

Starburst galaxy M82 and its superwind

Four years went by at UCL. This is one of the main objects of my study - the galaxy M82, a beautiful nearby (ahem, 10 million light-years) starburst galaxy with a large bipolar superwind. I was fortunate enough to get some of the deepest (longest exposure) imaging from the WIYN telescope, which I put together into a composite together with some images from the Hubble Space Telescope in this image in order to highlight its bright wind plumes (the purple streams).

At the start of these fours years, my disconnected, shallow relationships with people/friends, and particularly my family, proved to me that I really needed to start sorting out my issues. I first went to the (wonderful and thankfully free) UCL counselling service who put me in touch with a private psychotherapist who they thought might work for me. I started psychotherapy twice a week. In the 3 1/2 years I did this, my life turned around. I found things I never knew existed, I began down the road of understanding who I really am. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to my therapist for his skill, patience and understanding, and for my life situation at the time for providing the funds to pay for all those sessions. Essentially I learned why I kept everyone at arms length, and how self-destructive that had become.

One of the things we touched on in the therapy was my choice to study astronomy. If one is suffering from events in life that are extremely difficult to deal with and look at, it does strike you that concerning oneself with things in deep space is one of the greatest escapes... So it might have been that this wish to escape the reality of life on Earth contributed to a greater or lesser degree to my choice to study astronomy. But through the therapy, I learnt how to face what had happened in my past, how I felt and how I feel about it now, and how I acted and continued to act as a consequence of these events; the escape to outer space became less and less necessary. I think this was the first seed of my decision to re-orient my life.