Michelle Kunimoto, the 23-year-old rising star of UBC’s astronomy department, is widening her gaze for the new year, after her discovery of four planet candidates through her analysis of data gathered by NASA’s Kepler satellite.
She was still a University of B.C. undergrad when she published her findings last May, and her currently-in-the-works master’s thesis is a quest to estimate the number of Earthlike planets in the entire Milky Way Galaxy, based on a statistical analysis of Kepler data from 150,000 stars.
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Her earlier work studying data from 400 stars was remarkable in that she made discoveries that had been missed by NASA’s own team of Kepler astronomers.
“I was applying different criteria,” Kunimoto said. “I use the analogy of a crowded room, if you’re in a crowded room and trying to pick out somebody’s voice, and they are speaking really quietly. The Kepler team were only looking for volumes above a certain level, whereas I would take longer, trying to listen for the quieter people.”