Heidi B. Hammel (born March 14, 1960) is an American planetary astronomer who has extensively studied Neptune and Uranus. She was part of the team imaging Neptune from Voyager 2 in 1989. She led the team using the Hubble Space Telescope to view Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact with Jupiter in 1994. She has used the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope to study Uranus and Neptune, discovering new information about dark spots, planetary storms and Uranus' rings. In 2002, she was selected as an interdisciplinary scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope. Hammel spends increasing time as a science communicator. She is the 2002 recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal given to a scientist whose communications have greatly enhanced the general public's understanding of planetary science. She was one of Discover Magazine's 50 most important women in science in 2003. In addition to her public-facing work at NASA, she became the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) in 2010.
Personal life Hammel was born in California and is the mother of three children.
Education Hammel received her undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982 and her Ph.D. in physics and astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 1988. After a post-doctoral position at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, Hammel returned to MIT, where she spent nearly nine years as a principal research scientist in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences.
Career Hammel was the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), a consortium of 44 US members (universities as well as educational and non-profit institutions) and 5 international affiliates. AURA operates world-class astronomical observatories including the Hubble Space Telescope, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the National Solar Observatory, and the Gemini Observatory. Hammel became the executive vice president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) in 2010. Hammel says she realized about 15 years into her career that people were needed in the scientific community who plan for and work towards the future of science.
I made a commitment several years ago to move from the doing of the research to the enabling of the research... I want to make sure that ... young people have the opportunities, with the new tools that we're developing right now, to push the boundaries of science. Prior to her appointment at AURA, Hammel was employed as a senior research scientist and co-director of research at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In 2002, she was selected as an interdisciplinary scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope's successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, which launched in 2021. She was also a member of the Science Working Group for the giant segmented mirror telescope. She served on the joint NASA/NSF Exoplanet Taskforce, and on the Science and Technology Definition Team for NASA's Terrestrial planet Finder Coronograph mission.
Research Hammel's main areas of interest are ground and space-based astronomical observations of outer planets' atmospheres and satellites at visible and near infrared wavelengths utilizing Adaptive optics (AO) technology. Hammel has described her own research by saying:
"One thing that we all care about is the weather, and we care about the weather on the Earth the most. But what makes weather is gases and clouds, and the reason the weather on the Earth is hard to predict is because we have oceans and continents that interact with our atmosphere. That makes it very hard to predict the weather, as we all know. But if you take a planet like Jupiter or Neptune you don't have continents and you don't have oceans. All you have is gas, all you have is atmosphere, and therefore it's a lot easier to model the weather on those planets. But it's the same physical process, it's the same kind of thing happening, whether it happens on the Earth or whether it happens on Neptune. Therefore by studying weather on Neptune we learn about weather in general, and that helps us understand the weather on Earth better".
The Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck Telescope with its new adaptive optics changed how planetary astronomers look at Uranus and Neptune. With Hubble's advanced cameras and improvements to the adaptive optics systems of the Keck telescope, astronomers became able to capture "unbelievably crisp images" and view many details that could not be seen before. Hammel's planetary research with Hubble and Keck has demonstrated that both Uranus and Neptune are dynamic worlds.
Voyager 2, Neptune
Hammel primarily studies the outer planets and their satellites, focusing on observational techniques. She was a member of the Imaging Science Team for the Voyager 2 encounter with the planet Neptune in 1989.
Shoemaker-Levy 9, Jupiter In 1994, Hammel led the team that investigated Jupiter's visible wavelength response to the impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 using the Hubble Space Telescope. As the leader of the ground team Hammel analyzed photos of this event taken from the Hubble Space Telescope. Hammel was the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's public face, explaining the science to television audiences worldwide.
Great Dark Spot, Neptune Hammel was on the team that first spotted Neptune's Great Dark Spot, a raging storm as big as Earth, and she led the Hubble Space Telescope team that documented the Great Dark Spot's disappearance after just a few years, in 1994.
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