Hey guys, I'm 35 years old and plan to agressively go back to school. I love Astronomy and Planetary Sciences (Anything but the Earth--boring!) but dont know what to pursue exactly.

 I've read what it says here concerning planetary science http://www.princetonreview.com/Majors.aspx?cip=400203 and it sounds exactly like the stuff I'm into. I'm basically very into Exo Planetology and/or planets and moons of our solar system or eleswhere and how they react with their Stars. Solar Astronomy lsounds fascinating as well and so does Terraforming. I'm basically trying to find something that blends all these together or maybe Planetary Sciences is enough.

Can anyone give me any type of advice on anything?

 

Hi-

So planetary science is mostly about the interiors of planets (like geological processes), their atmospheres, but also includes things such as magnetospheres, processes on moons of planets (think Titan, Europa, Ganymede, and Io), and ring dynamics and systems.  If you're also interested in solar astronomy, and how stars work, then it seems to me that an astronomy/astrophysics is best suited for you.

A lot of planetary science really is based off what we learned from analyzing the geolophysical and atmospheric properties of the earth.

I'd recommend reading William K. Hartmann's Moons & Planets before you decide. As already mentioned, there's a lot of "earth science" in planetary geology.

It really took off (pun intended) when Apollo teams visited the Moon. What we learned about the Moon, and by extension the origin of Earth and Moon, after Apollo really got planetary geology going.

There's a great deal of new data from space probes like Cassini and we've visited several asteroids and comets now, too. Plus the Mars Rovers are still going strong and sending back reams of data that's providing new insights into the geological history of Mars.

Until the run-up to Apollo, solar system science was really a dead-end career in the opinion of most astronomers. Not so any longer ... most especially since Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter.

Permafrost:

. I love Astronomy and Planetary Sciences (Anything but the Earth--boring!) but dont know what to pursue exactly.

If you think the Earth is boring than I would suggest not going into Planetary Sciences.  If you can't stand to learn how this planet works than you are not going to have the basic skill set to understand how the other bodies in our solar system function.

L

I was a planetary scientist for 16 years, now switched to something else. That switch has nothing to do with planetary science as such. it is a wonderful area to work in, because it is so interdisciplinary (geophysics, atmospheric physics, magnetosphere, chemistry, astronomy / astrophysics, maths...) and because there is such cool data (not just telescopic obs. but also in situ). The PS community world wide is good and this is a really exciting time with all the planetary missions going on. I am now making films and a series of them are on planetary science (mmm, i wonder why). Anyway, take a look at real planetary scientists as they explain about their work at vimeo.com/lightcurvefilms (all films are free to view), in particular A Breath of Venus series (4), around Venus by Balloon and the speed of the wind.