William Cranch Bond
William Cranch Bond (born September 9, 1789 in Falmouth , District of Maine , Mass. (Now Portland , Maine ), USA , † January 29, 1859 in Cambridge , Massachusetts , USA) was an American astronomer . He discovered Hyperion , the eighth moon on the planet Saturn .
Bond was mainly self-taught and watchmaker in Boston . In 1812 he became a passionate amateur astronomer . In 1815 he traveled to Europe to study observatories, as he was planning a possible observatory at Harvard University . In 1832, Bond was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
In 1839 this observatory, the Harvard College Observatory , was established and Bond became its first director. In 1847 the observatory received a telescope with an opening width of 42.5 cm , which was the largest telescope in the world for the next twenty years. With this, Bond intensively examined sunspots , the Orion Nebula and Saturn. Together with his son George Phillips Bond , he discovered the moon Hyperion in 1848 - independently at the same time as the Englishman William Lassell .
Bond was a pioneer in astrophotography . Together with John Adams Whipple he made the first daguerreotype of a star in 1850 , the Vega . Bond and Whipple also took detailed photographs of the Earth's moon.
From 1851 he was a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . The moon crater W. Bond is named after William Cranch Bond , the asteroid (767) Bondia after him and his son George Phillips Bond . A ridge was named after him on Saturn's moon Hyperion .
literature
- Charles Couston Gillespie: Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol 2. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1970-80, ISBN 0-684-80588-X
Web links
- Harvard College Observatory: The Great Refractor
- WC Bond publications in the Astrophysics Data System
Individual evidence
- ^ List of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 22, 2019 (French).
- ^ Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Volume 1 in the Google Book Search
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bond, William Cranch |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 9, 1789 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Falmouth , USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 29, 1859 |
| Place of death | Cambridge , Massachusetts |