Exploring the Enigmatic Ice Giants with Dr. Heidi Hammel

In this talk, Dr. Heidi Hammel brings you up to date on Uranus and Neptune, discussing her results from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Keck 10-m telescope, and many other observatories. Dr. Hammel also reviews the plans for ice giant system exploration with NASA’s newest telescope — the James Webb Space Telescope — and describes plans for future missions to these distant worlds.

Dr. Heidi Hammel received her undergraduate degree from MIT and her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii. She is currently the Vice President for Science at AURA, a consortium that operates large astronomical observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope, Gemini Observatory, and many more. Dr. Hammel primarily studies outer planets; she served on the imaging team for the Voyager 2 Neptune encounter, and has studied Uranus and Neptune extensively with Hubble, Keck, and other facilities.