Shared Skies and Spectrographs: How John Kielkopf Helped Shape Generations of Space Scientists

By Stephanie Godward, Communications and Marketing Director, College of Arts & Sciences 

John Kielkopf’s more than 55-year career as a physics and astronomy professor at UofL all began at the public library. 

“I have often been asked what got me interested in astronomy, and I suppose that it was reading science fiction in public libraries when I was young,” he said. “I grew up in the pre-space era, and my mother was very permissive. We lived in the Beechmont area, and so she let me ride my bicycle just about everywhere, and one of the places I landed was the public library. That is how it started.” 

His fascination with the world beyond earth transformed over the years, leading to Kielkopf’s impact on generations of students interested in studying space. Kielkopf completed his undergraduate studies at UofL in the early 60s and went on to Johns Hopkins University to complete his PhD before returning to UofL as a faculty member in 1969.    

With an observatory in Oldham County that he created for the use of local students, he also developed a unique Shared Skies program with the University of Southern Queensland in Australia for students to observe the Southern night sky while it is still daytime here in the U.S.  He has also installed telescopes at Mt. Lemmon in Arizona to conduct exoplanet research and is a pioneer in Distance Education in Astronomy. Kielkopf also contributed to the design development of the Gheen Science Planetarium. 

After initially becoming interested in astronomy by way of science fiction, Kielkopf’s aunts who worked at a printing company began to send him magazines. An issue on astronomy and space landed with him and his interest only deepened. 

“Then, eventually my cousin who was a few years older than I am went to the University of Kentucky and majored in physics. He began to hand me books he had gotten and talked about where he was headed, which ultimately was aerospace engineering,” Kielkopf said. “What actually sustained my interest was the Louisville Astronomical Society, a local group which still exists, and is a very vigorous organization. But at the time, it was doing two things – building a telescope in South Louisville on the property of a former math professor here and getting involved in a junior organization which supported young people and their interest in space or astronomy.” 

What propelled him to the next level was the National Science Foundation program, which at that time had summer institutes at major universities around the country. Kielkopf was in 10^th grade at the time he became a participant.  

“I went to the University of Tennessee and took several courses in physics and chemistry and came back and at that time I was pretty far ahead of the students in high school, so I came to the university and it got me in here a year ahead of my friends who were contemporaries. I landed at UofL in 1963.” 

Since then, the focus of his career’s passion has been optics and spectroscopy – the whole topic of instrumentation having been what sparked his passion for astronomy.  

“It fascinated me and so I was building telescopes myself and making spectrographs and doing experiments before I came here,” he states.  

During the course of his career at UofL, he has impacted students’ ability to use evolving technology. Kielkopf helped transform a retired telescope into a remote learning tool through creativity, collaboration, and persistence. When the local astronomical society offered to donate their telescope, he worked with a retired math professor-turned-machinist to relocate it to a new facility in Oldham County, funded with state support. Partnering with engineering colleagues and graduate students, the telescope became a foundation for broader efforts. A NASA education grant later enabled the development of Shared Skies—a remote astronomy program designed to engage K-12 students in real-time observation, in partnership with the planetarium. 

From the days of trying to figure out how to run a telescope from a computer 200 feet away to running a telescope on the other side of the world – Kielkopf has seen the evolution of physics and astronomy unfold over time. 

“As a doctoral student, I saw the nascent development of space science at Johns Hopkins, which ultimately hosted the space telescope. At the time I was there, they were doing rocket-based astronomy. You launch a modest sized rocket from White Sands, NM, and you get a few minutes in the sky, and it comes down, and you hope you can recover the telescope and do it again. The data was acquired over minutes at most,” he said. “It’s a gradual evolution where you just take advantage of what you’ve got and try to learn how to use it as best you can.” 

Connecting with students who have gone on to do great things has been one of the most positive aspects of his prolific career at UofL, in addition to the exploratory joy of research. 

“To watch them learn and develop and go on to lives and careers of their own – in many cases are amazing – that is the highlight, to see what they can do,” Kielkopf said. “Along with that, because of the research, there have been discoveries where you’re doing things as part of a research program where you know what you have to do, but you also find something you did not expect to see, or an opportunity come out that was not anticipated, and you can grab onto that. To have those come along, those are the highlights – standing in the lab and seeing something happen that you had no idea was going to happen. That's a wonderful experience and the same thing is true at a telescope when you find something you do not expect or in this process you learn how to make a measurement that opens up some avenue and you had no idea you could do that.” 

His work on exoplanets is an exact outcome of the research process – one he never could have predicted as a child at the public library years ago. 

"When I started, I had no idea I would end up looking at an exoplanet for the first time,” he said. “If you don’t do anything, and sit and wait for something to happen, it probably won’t happen. But by the process of just doing and exploring – if your eyes are open to things you don’t expect to see, then there’s an opportunity for discovery. That is where the pleasure in achievement is.”