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{"id":1697,"date":"2015-05-01T02:13:37","date_gmt":"2015-05-01T02:13:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/urban-plains.com\/2016\/?p=1697"},"modified":"2016-03-08T23:18:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T23:18:49","slug":"planet-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urban-plains.com\/2016\/culture\/planet-hunter\/","title":{"rendered":"Stargazing in the Heartland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Words by Avery Gregurich | Photos courtesy of Jason M. Boucher, Gooi Ying Chyi, and Steve Kawaler | April 30, 2015<\/p>\n

Astronomer Steve Kawaler never wants to take a break from considering the cosmos. But if he does, it\u2019s to play baseball \u2014 preferably at first base.<\/p>\n

\u201cBaseball provides a connection with people and the history of this country,\u201d Kawaler says. \u201cIt uses a different part of the brain.\u201d<\/p>\n

His life\u2019s work is a little less social \u2014 and it\u2019s also a direct paradox of his role at first. There, with his feet dug deep into the dirt, the floating white globes are easy to see, and they come directly to him.<\/p>\n

At work, though, they don\u2019t. He has to find them. And they\u2019re billions of miles away.<\/p>\n

\n
\"stars1\"<\/a>

Kawaler\u2019s work entails searching for sun-like stars and studying them to determine if there are any planets orbiting them.<\/p><\/div>

<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kawaler, 57, scours the outer reaches of the galaxy from his home base at Iowa State University. He searches for white dwarf stars, or as he calls them, stars in the \u201cdeath throes of our own sun.\u201d He comes to know these far-off stars well, studying their brightness measurements, which are recorded every minute or so for years at a time. These reveal the stars\u2019 vibrations, and in turn, tell Kawaler the fates of these stars.<\/p>\n

He and his colleagues\u2019 most recent discovery? A planetary system more than twice as old as ours.<\/p>\n

Kawaler serves on the Steering Committee for the Kepler Asteroseismology Research Consortium, or KASC. He coordinates the research of hundreds of astronomers around the world who use the K2 spacecraft\u2019s data. In January, the Kepler team reported on Kepler 444, a system of five small planets orbiting a sun-like star. The system is 11.2 billion years old, compared to our own sun\u2019s youthful age of 4.5 billion years.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt represents a whole system of planetary systems we didn\u2019t know existed. It took a while to appreciate the finding,\u201d Kawaler says. \u201cIt made me realize that \u2018we\u2019 necessarily haven\u2019t been here that long, but \u2018we\u2019 in a broader sense have been around a lot longer. It pushed my emotional concept about the age of the universe much deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

That appreciation began on Long Island, New York. He grew up during the \u201cSpace Race,\u201d learning the names of constellations from his brother\u2019s illustrated astronomy book. On light-polluted Long Island, it\u2019s difficult to see stars, which made it easy to learn the constellations \u201cbecause you can only see the bright ones,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A dilemma arose for Kawaler the first time he experienced a truly dark sky \u2014 one that still fuels his curiosity to this day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 12 or 13. We were on a family vacation somewhere in the mountains, and I couldn\u2019t find the Big Dipper. I was awed,\u201d Kawaler says.<\/p>\n

\n
\"stars2\"<\/a>

Kawaler is on the left. On the right is Neil deGrasse Tyson, a friend and fellow New Yorker. In the middle is Jacqueline Green, an esteemed scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who worked to send ultraviolet-sensitive telescopes on board spy planes to do astronomy at very high altitude. The photographer is classmate Richard Benzel, a professor at MIT and considered to be the world\u2019s expert on Pluto.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

His work is among the most distant type that exists, and so his days are largely spent not only in communication with the stars, but also with his students in class and colleagues around the globe.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, these distant collaborators and friends come and visit Kawaler in the Midwest. They come from Japan, China, Belgium, England, South Africa, and elsewhere. It\u2019s become tradition that when they make it to Iowa, Kawaler loads them up and drives them through the cornfields around Ames to The Open Flame restaurant in Gilbert. There, the stargazers feast on self-cooked steaks in the rural Midwest \u2014 often an alien experience for the world travelers.
\n\u201cTo a lot of people that don\u2019t know Iowa, they are pleasantly surprised,\u201d Kawaler says. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of exotic in a strange way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conversations at dinners like these naturally turn to the unknown. That\u2019s not unusual for Kawaler, though. The nature of existence comes up frequently in conversations like those with his science fiction-loving brother, Foster, who counted the late Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy among his friends. It was Foster\u2019s books and space toys that first made Kawaler consider the cosmos differently. \u201cStrangely,\u201d Kawaler says, \u201cwhat grounds him in reality is his love of science fiction. He realizes that this is a very special place here. But like me, he believes that there is life elsewhere, and is hoping to live long enough to find it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Though<\/a>

Though he\u2019s grounded on Earth, Kawaler\u2019s work exists billions of miles away.<\/p><\/div>\n

The search, though, takes a great deal of time: eleven innings in late July kind of time. And while he waits for the latest photographs and data to come in from roaming spacecraft, Kawaler dusts off his mitt.<\/p>\n

But although he likes to play first \u2014 \u201cit\u2019s always a part of the action,\u201d Kawaler says \u2014 sometimes, for an astronomer at least, right field is more fitting. Out there, the little white globes aren\u2019t so easy to find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How astronomer Steve Kawaler travels the galaxy from the Midwest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[4],"tags":[25,26,41,237,245],"yoast_head":"\nStargazing in the Heartland | Urban Plains<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Astronomer Steve Kawaler translates star gazing wonderment as a boy into a lifelong career.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/urban-plains.com\/2016\/culture\/planet-hunter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Stargazing in the 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