David Kilkenny

Extraordinary Professor                                                                   

Email: dmk at saao.ac.za

 

Being appointed to a research post at the SAAO in late 1980. I worked my way steadily downwards from research to head of Telescope Operations by 2004. In 2006, I was forced to take early retirement and then – bizarrely – given a two year contract to continue working there. Around 2007, I was awarded an honorary “Extraordinary” Professorship at UWC where I have bumbled along happily until the present. My research interest have included early-type stars and galactic structure; the interstellar medium; R Coronae Borealis stars, the Hydrogen-deficient Carbon stars and the hot “extreme helium” stars; eclipsing binary stars; and pulsating stars – especially the evolved hot subdwarf and white dwarf stars. I recently completed the Edinburgh-Cape Blue Object Survey – a search for new hot objects in the Southern sky – and can now die a happy man. I am involved in collaborations searching for exoplanets around sdB and white dwarf pulsators and am also working on variable amplitudes and periods in known sdB/sdO pulsators as well as continuing to search for new members of the class.