courses at the end of which students are awarded with certificates in astronomy st josephs and the birla institute of fundamental research in bangalore only have certificate courses there may be others in other cities and the best place to find out would be the local planetariumprofessor murthy elaborates bangalore university amongst others offers an msc in astronomy as does calicut university these also offer in general phd programmes specialised institutes like indian institute of astrophysics iia inter university centre for astronomy and astrophysics aries tata institute of fundamental research s n bose as well as indian institute of science and a few of the iits take students for the phd programme iia takes students with an msc or with a be btechthough there are many institutions offering postgraduate courses and facilitating research there are very few offering undergraduate courses some of them are dr babasaheb ambedkar marathwada university aurangabad shivaji university kolhapur university of lucknow and university of chennaiprospectsthis is definitely not just another job professor banibrata mukhopadhyay from indian institute of science says in order to do research you need to have a passion for it as well as the desire to learnafter having done a course in astronomy one can be a research scientist with several research institutes and government organisations during the research work one can receive a monthly stipend ranging from rs 8000 rs 9000 besides other grants and facilities after completing research employment opportunities with different institutions increase various government bodies and institutes also employ astronomers as scientists who are given high salaries with other perks and allowancesdebinachattopadhyaytimesgroupcom