My search for life on other planets kept me going when my husband died

For Sara Seager, star-gazing offered a sense of perspective when tragedy struck

Fifteen years ago, I started my job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As an astrophysicist and planetary scientist, my job is to search for alien life. Not little green humanoids like ET, but signs of life on planets orbiting other stars. Every star is a sun and if our sun has planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, etc) it makes sense that other stars have planets also - and they do. We already know of thousands of stars that have planets. There are billions of stars in our galaxy making the possibilities out there" huge and wondrous.

Back then, I had the perfect life: a great career; my dream home, a pretty yellow Victorian house; two adorable toddlers; and a loving husband.