Laura Fissel

Star Formation Studies with Balloon-Borne Telescopes

I study how stars and planets form. Star formation appears to be an incredibly inefficient process, and this has important consequences for everything from the chemical evolution of our universe, to the formation of planets. To study how star formation is regulated, I work with international teams of scientists to design and build powerful balloon-borne telescopes. Balloon telescopes operate in the stratosphere, above more than 99.5% of the Earth’s atmosphere, and can therefore make large and extremely detailed maps of star-forming regions in our galaxy. One of our telescopes, BLAST-TNG, is scheduled for a first launch from Antarctica in December 2019. I also leads surveys using larger ground-based telescopes from all over the world, in order to get even more detailed views of star and planet-forming regions. My research team works closely with theoretical astrophysicists to make detailed comparisons of our observations to predictions from simulations of star formation.