Growing up under a pristine night sky far from city lights, one scholar’s fascination with the cosmos began early. Surrounded by stars and the Milky Way, Nicholas Saunders was captivated by the sheer magnitude of the universe. But his interest in exoplanets—planets orbiting stars outside our solar system—was sparked by a revelation he discovered in school: on average, every star has at least one planet. This groundbreaking discovery, made in the early 2000s, revealed just how much was still unknown about the universe and fueled his curiosity about the diversity of planets yet to be discovered.

“It blew my mind that we were still figuring out fundamental things about the universe because before then, we didn't have a good picture of how common planets were, and we only knew about the ones right next to us,” Saunders shares. “That discovery really pushed my interest in exploring exoplanets as a field of study.”

Fast forward to today, Saunders is a Honolulu ARCS Scholar studying exoplanets at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, renowned for its access to some of the world’s best telescopes on Mauna Kea. As a graduate student, he has the unique opportunity to lead observing runs using 10-meter telescopes to collect data on distant stars and planets. At 14,000 feet above the clouds, the telescopes he utilizes in Hawaii are ideal for astronomy observations.

His research relies on telescopes on the ground and in space. Space-based telescopes like TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) allow scientists like Saunders to observe stars continuously for extended periods without interruption from weather or the Earth's rotations. By precisely measuring the light from stars, he can detect the tiny dips in brightness that occur when a planet passes in front of a star—revealing the presence of planets, some of which may have orbital periods as short as a few days.

One of the most pressing questions in Saunders’s work is understanding what happens to planets when their host stars die. His research focuses on the late stages of stellar evolution and aims to discover if planets survive after their stars swell into red giants. It’s predicted the Sun will eventually engulf the Earth as it expands, and this scholar’s work could shed light on how other planetary systems evolve and survive.

“There's been a lot of predictions about when planets should be destroyed,” says Saunders. “Should they be engulfed by their stars over the billions of years that they're orbiting them? Or do they survive to the very end, until the star goes supernova or becomes a white dwarf, or whatever a state might be? To answer those questions, we need to find more.”

Saunders is grateful to ARCS for the Scholar Award, giving him a scientific community to rely on. “One of the biggest ways it's helped me is by connecting me with other people at the university who I would never have met,” shares Saunders, “who can inspire me with their own research and give me new ways to think about my own research.”