We thought of Uranus's atmosphere as pretty much dead. And it's not. Heidi Hammel More Quotes by Heidi Hammel More Quotes From Heidi Hammel By monitoring auroral activity on exoplanets, we may be able to infer the presence of water on or within an exoplanet, now, it's not going to be easy — it's not as easy as Ganymede and Jupiter, and that wasn't easy. It may require a much larger telescope than Hubble, it may require some future space telescope, but nevertheless, it's a tool now that we didn't have prior to this work that Joachim and his team have done. Heidi Hammel science Scientists normally like to do experiments. You know, they like to mix this with that and see what happens. They like to take this thing and poke it and see how it reacts. In astronomy, we can't do that. The stars, the planets, the galaxies, are so far away that we just look at them, and we have to learn things by looking at them. Heidi Hammel looking look you stars We need people pushing the boundaries. Exploration is what we, as humans, do. Heidi Hammel need exploration boundaries people Weather forecast for Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt: cloudy with a chance of ammonia. Heidi Hammel belt cloudy chance weather Every observation that we make, every mission that we send to various places in the solar system is just taking us one step further to finding that truly habitable environment, a water-rich environment. Heidi Hammel finding mission step environment I feel like an old-fashioned mountain climber when I am making discoveries, seeing something for the first time, realizing that no human before me has ever seen what I am seeing. It takes your breath away - for just a moment, you feel a pause in time, as you know you are crossing a boundary into a new realm of knowledge. Heidi Hammel me moment time knowledge We really have only been observing Neptune with big telescopes since shortly before 1989. Heidi Hammel only before big observing My message is don't be discouraged by anything anybody tells you. In my case of the science thing, and I just ignored people who said, 'Oh, girls don't do that.' Heidi Hammel you said science people No one planet can tell us everything about the universe, but Neptune seems to hold more than its share of information about the formation of our own solar system - as well as the solar systems beyond. Heidi Hammel own everything information universe What I want to look at with Webb is what we call ice giants in our solar system - the planets Neptune and Uranus. Heidi Hammel solar system look want Every field of astrophysics - whether it's our local neighborhood of planets, nearby stars and their attendant planets, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, out to the edge of the universe - every field has questions that are awaiting the power of Hubble. Heidi Hammel questions universe stars power When Hubble was launched, it became clear very shortly thereafter that there was a problem with the optics.The mirror was not quite the right shape. And the one program that I had really been looking forward to doing with Hubble was studying outer planets in our solar system, the planets Uranus and Neptune. Heidi Hammel mirror looking doing looking-forward Most people have already seen a cosmic collision. If you've seen a shooting star ever, you've seen a cosmic collision, because a shooting star is not a star. It's a tiny dust or pea sized fragment of an asteroid or a comet hitting our atmosphere and burning up as it hits in, as it comes in. Heidi Hammel you shooting dust people It's very clear that global climate change is occurring on earth, but it's also been very clear that that has always happened on earth. We've always had a changing climate on earth. We all know about ice ages. We know when our continent was covered with ice sheets. We know glaciers come and they go. It puzzles me that people forget that. Heidi Hammel me climate-change change people It's clear that the only thing that is inhibiting us from doing further human exploration of space is money and the will to do it. Heidi Hammel will doing money space I'm happy here on the surface of the earth. If space travel ever got to be as simple as jet travel today, yeah, I'd take a jet flight to the moon. Heidi Hammel simple happy today travel Technological prescience in science fiction usually requires an author with luck. Societal prescience requires a poet. Heidi Hammel science-fiction poet luck science The Hubble Telescope can see the farthest galaxies. The Webb Telescope will see the farthest stars. Heidi Hammel telescope will see stars Even after years of observing, a new picture of Uranus from Keck Observatory can stop me in my tracks and make me say, 'Wow!' Heidi Hammel picture stop new me We've explored every type of environment in the solar system at least once. Heidi Hammel solar system solar-system environment
