Michael William Feast (29 December 1926 – 1 April 2019) was a British-South African astronomer. He served as Director of the

South African Astronomical Observatory The South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's f ...

from 1976–1992, then became a professor at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

. His research focussed on the structure of the

Milky Way The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the #Appearance, galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galax ...

, the

Magellanic Clouds The Magellanic Clouds (''Magellanic system'' or ''Nubeculae Magellani'') are two irregular dwarf galaxies in the southern celestial hemisphere. Orbiting the Milky Way galaxy, these satellite galaxies are members of the Local Group. Because both ...

, and the

cosmic distance ladder The cosmic distance ladder (also known as the extragalactic distance scale) is the succession of methods by which astronomers determine the distances to celestial objects. A ''direct'' distance measurement of an astronomical object is possible ...

using variable stars.

Career and honours

Feast holds the degrees of BSc (Hons) and PhD from London From 1949 to 1951 he worked with

Gerhard Herzberg Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg, (; December 25, 1904 – March 3, 1999) was a German-Canadian pioneering physicist and physical chemist, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1971, "for his contributions to the knowledge ...

at the National Research Council in

Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

, Canada, following which from 1952 to 1974 he was at the Radcliffe Observatory, Pretoria He was also director of the

from 1976 to 1992. He received the DeBeers Medal from the South African Institute of Physics in 1992 and the Gill Medal from the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa in 1983. Feast was an Honorary Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charitable organisation, charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, planetary science, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its ...

, Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. The University of Cape Town awarded him an honorary

Doctor of Science A Doctor of Science (; most commonly abbreviated DSc or ScD) is a science doctorate awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. Africa Algeria and Morocco In Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, all universities accredited by the s ...

degree in 1993. Feast was an editor of the journal ''

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ''Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society'' (MNRAS) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in astronomy, astrophysics and related fields. It publishes original research in two formats: papers (of any length) and letters (limited to ...

''. His most frequently cited paper (440 times) relates to his pioneering study of the brightest stars in the Magellanic Clouds with Thackeray and Wesselink; see, for example, Hodge (1999). Much of his work has related to the Cepheid period-luminosity relation, for example that on its zero-point as determined via the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions and distances of ...

satellite He died in his sleep on 1 April 2019, aged 92.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feast, Michael William 1926 births 2019 deaths 20th-century British astronomers Academic staff of the University of Cape Town South African astronomers