Astro is one of the areas where compsci and physics PhDs can come in and be helpful. The underlying data model of the universe is far more amenable to data processing than biological data. I was a biologist who switched to astro for a while and I was totally blown away at how "easy" it was, especially the data processing. The scientists were typical in their data analytics ability (roughly the same level of ability across many fields).

Once I visited the astro folks at Caltech and they were light years ahead of everybody else in every tchnical dimension. But that's CAltech for you.