Emily Gaubatz
Mr. Percival
Astronomy
1/10/12
William Cranch Bond
William was born in Falmouth, Main in 1789. He apprenticed his father becoming a clock maker as his first career. in 1806 he saw a solar eclipse when he was 17, peeking his interest in astronomy. In his first house he built an observatory in his parlor that had a hole in the ceiling so he could have a telescope out it. In 1815 Bond was hired by Harvard University to gather information on European observatories. Bond later moved to Harvard with his astronomical equipment and serve unpaid as its Astronomical Observer to the University.
In 1843 Harvard was able to raise enough money towards building a high end observatory due to a sun grazing comet that aroused interest. Bond helped supervise construction of the observatory at Harvard as well as the observing chair which are both still in working order today. The observing chair was on tracks and could be adjusted to go up or down depending on where the eye piece was. Harvard also purchased a 15-inch refracting telescope, which was equal in size to the largest ones in the world at that time in 1847. It was built by Merz and Mahler of Munich and earned the name the Great Refractor. The telescope was first pointed at the moon in 1847. Bond became its first director.
During the later years of his life William Cranch Bond and his son, George Philips Bond worked together in their astronomical studies. He and his son discovered Saturn’s eighth satellite, the moon Hyperion in 1848. In 1850, Bond and his son turned the telescope towards Saturn discovering it’s inner ring, Crape Ring. Later in his career he began working with John Adams Whipple, together, Bond and his son pioneered astrophotography. Their first daguerreotype was taken of Vega in 1850 using a hundred second exposure. They also achieved taking one of the earliest photographs of a double star, Mizar and Alcor which are in the Big Dipper’s handle using wet-collodion plates. Total they took between 200 and 300 pictures of celestial objects. A crater on the moon is also named after William Cranch Bond. Most of Bond’s studies focused on the Orion Nebula and Saturn. A section of Hyperion is called Bond-Lassell Dorsum. An asteroid discovered by Metcalf in 1913 was called Bondia also honoring the Bonds. Both William Cranch Bond and his son played a large roll in astronomy during their lifetimes.
William Cranch Bond died in Cambridge on January 29, 1859.
More work cited:
"Bond, William Cranch." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 10 Jan. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
No comments:
Post a Comment