As a first-year student at the University of Virginia, Sarah Peacock thought she was gravitating toward finance and business – until her astronomy professor discovered a new ring around Saturn.
“I realized there’s so much to be discovered in space and it inspired me to pursue a degree in astrophysics,” she said.
Peacock only took the course because all the finance courses were filled and she had enjoyed astronomy in high school. Then professor Michael Skrutskie helped discover the largest known planetary ring in the solar system, and it changed her mind.
“When I told my parents I was switching majors, my dad told me I would need a Ph.D. and my mom told me it would make it harder to find a husband,” she said.
After graduating from UVA in 2013 and completing her doctorate in planetary science from the University of Arizona in 2019, Peacock is now an astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, hunting for habitable worlds.
“My goal in life is to find life on planets outside our solar system,” she said. “There are many factors that need to be considered to do this, and the key piece of this puzzle that I contribute to is understanding the high-energy radiation emitted from the host stars and assessing whether their planets are exposed to levels that might hinder habitability.”
Growing up in Northern Virginia, she visited many state schools on her school tour and UVA stuck out as a special place. “I was far and away struck by UVA. It was raining the day I visited and, even with the rain, I still thought it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.”
At UVA, Peacock showed her own high energy. Outside of her studies, she served on Student Council and volunteered at the Westminster Child Care Center, where she later worked, through Madison House.
Peacock attends a UVA football game with fellow alumni Jordan Veschi (formerly McEwen), left, and Megan Gwaltney (formerly Stangeby), right. (Contributed photo)
She was also heavily involved with UVA’s Dark Skies, Bright Kids program, a volunteer-run science outreach group of the astronomy department that leads classroom visits and after-school programming at local schools.
No stranger to multitasking, Peacock addressed both of her parents’ concerns on the same day. On Nov. 22, 2019, she defended her Ph.D. at 10 a.m. After she passed, she had a brief party at the university before going home to take a much-needed nap and change into a white dress. At 5 p.m., she and her now-husband Wade Reynolds had an intimate courthouse wedding surrounded by other couples.
Peacock hunts for habitable planets in other solar systems at NASA’s Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory. (Contributed photo)
“Everyone was so excited for themselves and excited for each other, because we were all there, all in love and all ready to get married,” she said.
At NASA, Peacock uses both spacecraft data and computer simulations to analyze how much high-energy radiation stars produce to help determine if life can exist on any of the planets that orbit them.
In the context of her work, Peacock defines habitability as conditions similar to those on Earth, requiring a planet’s temperature to support liquid water on its surface and an atmosphere with breathable air. To ensure the presence of such an atmosphere, the planet must not be exposed to excessive levels of extreme ultraviolet radiation, which Peacock studies. High levels of such radiation can potentially cause the planet to lose its entire atmosphere.
