Invited Talk: Sara Seager

Two representatives from the new AAS Laboratory Astrophysics Division (LAD) — Steven Federman (University of Toledo) and Farid Salama (NASA Ames Research Center) — introduced the first plenary speaker on Tuesday morning: Sara Seager (MIT). A highlight of her presentation, "Mapping the Nearest Stars for Exotic Habitable Worlds," was the display of a partial mockup of a star shade to be used, someday, to block the glare of an exoplanet's host star so that the planet's atmospheric chemistry can be studied directly.