Bill Keel, an Astronomer's Astronomer

Bill Keel was my PhD advisor. He retired from formal teaching at the University of Alabama last year, and his wife Teri asked some of his past students to write remembrances of Bill as part of his retirement celebration. In my typical fashion, I’ve finally completed mine, only sixteen months late.

The first thing I want to say is that I always think of Bill as an “Astronomer’s Astronomer” because his passion for all parts of astronomy—and indeed all things space—is both broad and deep. Mention anything to do with space in his presence (telescope, space mission, object, etc.) and Bill will know something about it, probably including a personal rememberence of his connection to it.

Bill has taught me many things over the years. I was drawn to astronomy primarily because of the amazing range of exotic objects that astronomers study: black holes, neutron stars, galaxies (giant and dwarf, interacting, normal, active galaxies: the list goes on.) Bill taught me to love everything about the sky; daytime or nighttime, with the naked eye, with telescopes of all sizes and capabilities, whether collecting data for a project—or because it was something beautiful. I remember getting ready for my first observation of a total eclipse in 2017, and talking with Bill about all the equipment I was bringing along to observe and photograph the eclipse. After reading about my grand plans, Bill gave me a great piece of advice: “Don’t forget to stop for a moment, to look around and take it all in.”

And of course he was correct; those few moments of totality where one of the most amazing experiences in my life.

Bill taught me that there are many different ways to teach besides classes; public observing nights, articles in popular magazines and non-research journals, engaging with citizen scientists (Bill has been extremely active with the Galaxy Zoo project, by far the most productive citizen science astronomy project to date), and by creating widely used image compilations, like his “Messier Gallery.”

Bill taught me not to waste telescope time: always have a target list and finding charts handy for things that may start a new—or add to an existing—project (or just something that was beautiful or unusual.) As an example, when I was doing some observing for my dissertation at the Lowell Observatory 42”, Bill sent along a list of overlapping galaxies for a project he and Ray White III were were working on, for me to slip in some observations of, if there were a chance (there was.)

Bill also provided data to me and many other astronomers. One of the galaxies I was planning on observing for my dissertation was NGC 3312, which had been suggested by John Gallagher in the 70s to be an example of a galaxy experiencing ram pressure induced stripping and star formation—the topic of my dissertation. When Bill heard this, he said: “You know, I might have some useful data on that galaxy.” Within a day or two, he handed over to me FITS files with an R-band image of the galaxy, as well a spectrum of one the brighter knots in a suspected ram pressure created filament. He also gave me a print of the blue sensitive plate used by Gallagher for his paper in the 70s—if my recollection is correct, the plate was actually taken by Bill’s undergraduate advisor, Dan Weedman. There ended up being a chapter in my dissertation looking at that data. As an aside—as far as I can tell—there is a better than even chance that if you mention any random AGN, merging or interacting galaxy system, or overlapping set of galaxies, that Bill will say: “Oh, I have some data on that!” And will be able to produce it within a day. Not only is the sheer volume of data that Bill has collected over his career staggering, but also, as far as I can discern, Bill keeps a mental catalog of all this data.

Congratulations to Bill on his “retirement,” a milestone in what has already been an amazing career. I say already because-though Bill is in a sense now retired—I suspect that he won’t slow down at all on doing astronomy. After all—in a true “astronomer’s astronomer” fashion, the day after he taught his final class, Bill had scheduled himself to observe simultaneously on three different remote telescopes (I wonder, did he also set up one or more telescopes at home so that when he needed a break, he could run outside and unwind with some eyepiece observations? It wouldn’t surprise if he did.)