astronomy

J. Davy Kirkpatrick

J. Davy Kirkpatrick is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand J. Davy Kirkpatrick rather than just read about it. In short: J. Davy Kirkpatrick is an American astronomer at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Key takeaways

J. Davy Kirkpatrick belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect J. Davy Kirkpatrick to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of J. Davy Kirkpatrick from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

J. Davy Kirkpatrick is an American astronomer at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. Kirkpatrick's research was named one of the top ten science accomplishments of the first ten years (1992–2002) of the W. M. Keck Observatory and one of the Top 100 Stories of 2011 by Discover Magazine.

Career

Education Kirkpatrick received a BS in mathematics and physics/astronomy from Vanderbilt University in 1986 and a PhD in astronomy from the University of Arizona in 1992. He was a W. J. McDonald Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin from 1992-1994, a National Research Council Fellow at JPL from 1994-1996, and a NICMOS Fellow at UCLA from 1996-1997 before being hired at Caltech, where he works today.

Brown Dwarfs and Low-mass Stars Much of Kirkpatrick's research has concentrated on the discovery and characterization of the lowest mass stars and brown dwarfs. After refining the far optical and near-infrared classifications of M dwarfs in the early 1990s and publishing the first spectrum of the brown dwarf candidate GD 165B, which would later be referred to as the first L dwarf discovery, Kirkpatrick joined the Two Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) team to search for even colder objects. Along with Neill Reid, he uncovered many objects similar to and colder than GD 165B, leading to the definition of the L dwarf spectral class. Also using 2MASS data, he and graduate student Adam Burgasser discovered brown dwarfs even colder than spectral class L, leading to the establishment of the T dwarf spectral class. More recently, as a member of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) team, Kirkpatrick and his research group have uncovered even colder brown dwarfs, leading to the establishment, with postdoc Michael Cushing, of the Y dwarf spectral class. Along with Adam Burgasser and Chris Gelino, Kirkpatrick maintains a listing of all known L, T, and Y dwarf discoveries at the DwarfArchives website.

Tyche Kirkpatrick is credited with first using the name "Tyche" to refer to a heretofore unseen, low-mass Solar companion in the Oort Cloud. He chose this term to be in direct contrast to "Nemesis", an unseen Solar companion hypothesized to lie in a highly elliptical orbit and to be responsible for periodic mass extinctions on the Earth. Kirkpatrick's own search using the 2MASS data set rules out any Solar companion more massive than 30 Jupiter masses, although analysis of the WISE data set should set much more stringent limits.

Selected publications "New Spectral Types L and T" from Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 2005 "M Dwarfs and L Dwarfs", Chapter 9 of Stellar Spectral Classification

Awards and honors 2011 Wendell G. Holladay Lectureship 2010 Marc Aaronson Memorial Lectureship 2003 Watkins Visiting Professorship, Wichita State University 1986 Underwood Award, Vanderbilt University Department of Physics and Astronomy

References

External links Radio SETI interview, Fall 2011, entitled "You've Got Sol!" News report, August 2011, entitled "NASA WISE Mission Uncovers Stars Cooler Than The Human Body" Podcast of Keck Public Lecture, October 2006, entitled "Brown Dwarfs: Bridging the Gap Between Stars and Planets" "Ask an Astronomer" video from 2003 entitled "What is a Brown Dwarf?" Archived 2012-02-06 at the Wayback Machine

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with J. Davy Kirkpatrick

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what J. Davy Kirkpatrick claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to J. Davy Kirkpatrick before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about J. Davy Kirkpatrick ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of J. Davy Kirkpatrick

In research: J. Davy Kirkpatrick appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses J. Davy Kirkpatrick in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: J. Davy Kirkpatrick is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, American astronomers, Living people, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for J. Davy Kirkpatrick outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study J. Davy Kirkpatrick in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what J. Davy Kirkpatrick means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain J. Davy Kirkpatrick out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is J. Davy Kirkpatrick in simple terms?

J. Davy Kirkpatrick is an American astronomer at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Why does J. Davy Kirkpatrick matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study J. Davy Kirkpatrick?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on J. Davy Kirkpatrick.