News Archive / Author: Laurel Kornfeld
Laurel Kornfeld is an amateur astronomer and freelance writer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science from Swinburne University’s Astronomy Online program. Her writings have been published online in The Atlantic, Astronomy magazine’s guest blog section, the UK Space Conference, the 2009 IAU General Assembly newspaper, The Space Reporter, and newsletters of various astronomy clubs. She is a member of the Cranford, NJ-based Amateur Astronomers, Inc. Especially interested in the outer solar system, Laurel gave a brief presentation at the 2008 Great Planet Debate held at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD.
Articles By Laurel Kornfeld
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Scientists trace meteor showers back to long-period comets
June 19th, 2021Scientists traced up to 15 lesser-known meteor showers through which Earth travels annually to long-period comets with orbits that take up to 4,000 years.
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Titan sample return mission being explored by NASA engineers
May 30th, 2021Funded by a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program grant, scientists are exploring a possible mission to return samples from Saturn's moon Titan.
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Exoplanets and their characterization the focus of STScl workshop
May 11th, 2021The various methods used over the last 25 years to discover exoplanets and the science of categorizing the many types of exoplanets that have been found was the focus of an April 19 workshop for science writers sponsored by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI).
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New Horizons spacecraft is now 50 AU from the Sun
April 22nd, 2021NASA's New Horizons spacecraft achieved a major milestone on Saturday, April 17, when it reached a distance of 50 AU from the Sun.
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Science journalist outlines challenges of settling the Moon and Mars
April 16th, 2021Human settlement of the Moon and Mars will require overcoming numerous challenges, including living in low gravity and protecting people from radiation.
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Mars and Titan: Two very different potentially habitable worlds
March 23rd, 2021Mars and Saturn’s moon Titan are at the forefront of the search for habitable solar system worlds, but they are very different from one another in terms of the presence of liquid, temperature variations, and the presence of organic compounds, planetary scientist Vincent Chevrier of the University of Arkansas noted in a March 12 online […]
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Hubble Space Telescope discoveries highlighted by astronomer
March 14th, 2021During its 31 years of activity, the Hubble Space Telescope has been "one of the most successful scientific experiments in history," used to research numerous fields of astronomy ranging from cosmology and the expansion of the universe to the characterization of exoplanets, said astronomer Tom Brown of the Space Telescope Science Institute in a March 2 online presentation.
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Various icy compounds make up Pluto’s atmospheric haze
February 8th, 2021Pluto's famous blue atmospheric haze likely formed differently from the hazes surrounding Saturn's moon Titan and Neptune's moon Triton, study finds.
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Amount of water on the Moon varies by location and time of day
February 6th, 2021Two Earth-based studies confirm water molecules are present on the Moon, but amounts vary depending on location and time of day, Casey Honniball of NASA.
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Asteroid naming contest sparks discussion of women in astronomy
January 26th, 2021The selection of the late astronomer Ada Amelia Carrera Rodriguez as the winner of an asteroid-naming contest sparked an online panel discussion by the contest's sponsors about the role of women in astronomy.
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Moon Dialogs bring together stakeholders in near-future lunar activity
January 12th, 2021Moon Dialogs, a partnership that seeks to bring together a wide variety of stakeholders to brainstorm about near-future lunar activity, organized Zoom sessions throughout 2020 exploring the wide range of topics pertinent to policy and governance on the Moon.
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Damaged Arecibo Observatory collapses
December 1st, 2020The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, a world-famous 1,000-foot-wide radio telescope through which major discoveries in astronomy and astrophysics were made, collapsed on the morning of Tuesday, Dec. 1, after one of its main cables broke on Nov. 6.
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Probe finds deep space is not completely dark
December 1st, 2020Now more than four billion miles away from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, acting as a distant space observatory, has found that deep space is not entirely dark.
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Arrokoth’s flattened shape could shed light on planetesimal formation process
November 15th, 2020The flattened shape of the two lobes that make up Arrokoth, the Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) visited by the New Horizons spacecraft in January 2019, may hold clues to the formation process of planetesimals and even planets.
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OSIRIS-REx capsule closed following successful Bennu sample collection
November 1st, 2020NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft collected enough soil samples of the asteroid Bennu on its first attempt that mission controllers commanded the spacecraft to close its Sample Return Capsule (SRC).
