“I’m interested in updating the algorithms we use to subtract starlight—bringing them into the 2020s and 2030s, cleaning the starlight from images in new ways using our exquisite knowledge of the really stable JWST spacecraft.”

William Balmer

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, where the sky is often overcast, William Balmer (they/them) learned to love the cosmos through stories told by their parents, board books, and Carl Sagan documentaries. In June 2025, they contributed an inspiring addition to this canon, co-leading the team that captured the first direct image of 14 Herculis c—one of the coldest and oldest exoplanets ever imaged.

By synthesizing 30 years of indirect observations tracking the tiny gravitational tugs 14 Herculis c exerts on its host star and wobbles in the star’s position, Balmer and collaborators determined precisely where the planet ought to be. They then trained the JWST on that exact patch of sky, obtaining a direct image that confirmed their team’s predictions about the planet’s elliptical orbit and gravitational tug-of-war with its sibling planet.

Most directly imaged exoplanets are young and blazing hot, glowing with the leftover heat of their turbulent births, which makes them easier to spot against their even brighter host stars. But the universe is mostly populated by older, colder planets—worlds more like our own, that have had billions of years to settle and potentially develop the conditions necessary for life. Theirs is a story Balmer is especially keen to tell.

Balmer uses coronagraphs—instruments aboard telescopes that block starlight—to reveal planets hiding in the stellar glare. The challenge is extracting useful data from what remains: faint planetary light contaminated by residual starlight that current algorithms, developed in the early 2000s, can’t fully clear. Balmer cleans away even more starlight by creating detailed optical models of how light travels through JWST’s mirrors and lenses, more fully exploiting the telescope’s extraordinary power and stability.

As a 51 Pegasi b Fellow, Balmer will help usher planetary imaging into a new age by advancing their techniques with methods from medical imaging and the latest visual data science. With these innovations, Balmer will study the formation of giant planets and examine the atmospheres of increasingly cold, faint worlds. They’ll also model prospective observations—including those of another planet in the 14 Herculis system—for the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope mission, whose visible-light coronagraph captures wavelengths short enough to reveal atmospheric clouds and how they scatter.

Outside the lab, Balmer is also a devoted mentor to aspiring scientists at all stages from curiosity to career. In this outreach, as with their astronomical observations, Balmer aims to tell compelling stories—with precisely the right details—to bring the science to life.

Balmer will receive their Ph.D. in astrophysics from Johns Hopkins University in Spring 2026.