Hawaii is perfect for astronomy, according to astronomy instructor Geoff Mathews, but the Mnoa campus didnt have any undergraduate degrees in astronomy and astrophysics until now.

And UH of all places with its great telescope on Big Island and Maui, good research institute for astronomy and a strong physics and astronomy department, its just obvious and its timely that we (Mnoa) should have such a program, said Pui Lam, Department of Physics and Astronomy chairman.

The Board of Regents approved the launch of these two degrees at its Aug. 21 meeting.

Comprised of 62 credit hours, the astrophysics degree program is intended for students who want to study the origin of the universe and how solar systems are created, Lam said. According to David Sanders, astronomy graduate program chairman at the Institute for Astronomy, astrophysics is more of a professional science degree for someone going on to graduate school.

In other words, an undergraduate degree in astrophysics is almost a necessity if youre going to go on to graduate work and get a Ph.D. in the field because astronomy is basically a subset of physics. Its just physics applied to stars and galaxies, Sanders said. So it requires a pretty good background in physics, math, and then depending on what branch of astrophysics, you could have some biology and chemistry as well, but in terms of undergraduate degrees, the easiest thing to say is it requires more credit hours and the hard sciences.

The astronomy program, which requires 48 credits, is intended for students who are interested in how stars are formed in the historical way, rather than the physics behind it.

Both programs require courses in astronomy, physics, math and chemistry.

PROGRAMS WORTH WAITING FOR

According to Lam, the process to create these degrees started more than two years ago, but it really began in the 1960s when the then-physics department became the department of physics and astronomy.

During that time, a group of astronomers had been hired into the department and later established the research astronomy institute. Some taught introductory astronomy courses but there was no full program.

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Looking at the stars