Joseph Burns is a professor at Cornell University with a dual appointment in the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) and the Astronomy department.
In 1979 Burns definitively explained the effect of radiation forces on small particles in the solar system.
[8] In 1998, Burns, Gladman, Nicholson, and Kavelaars co-discovered Caliban and Sycorax, two moons of Uranus.
The Themistian asteroid 2708 Burns, discovered by Edward Bowell in 1981, was named in his honor.
[10] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 4 August 1982 (M.P.C.