Hi There!

I'm an astronomer in search of Earth 2.0 and life elsewhere in the universe! Specifically, my job is to figure out what atmospheres of extra-solar planets are made of (planets orbiting other stars outside our solar system) in order to look for possible signs of life other than our own!

"I guess I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space." 

-Contact, Carl Sagan   

The way I do this is with the transit method, where I monitor a star's brightness over time, and when the star appears to get dimmer, this means a planet is passing in front of the star in Earth's line of sight.  Here's an example of what this looks like: