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.

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is a NASA infrared astronomy space telescope in the Explorers Program launched in December 2009. WISE discovered thousands of minor planets and numerous star clusters. Its observations also supported the discovery of the first Y-type brown dwarf and Earth trojan asteroid. WISE performed an all-sky astronomical survey with images in 3.4, 4.6, 12 and 22 μm wavelength range bands, over ten months using a 40 cm (16 in) diameter infrared telescope in Earth orbit.