Bond, George Phillips (1825-1865)| US astronomer who developed astronomical photography. In 1850 he took the first photograph of a star (Vega). His research was carried out at the Harvard Observatory together with his father, William Cranch Bond. |
| Bond was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard, remaining there at the observatory under his father and succeeding him as director when he died 1859. |
| During the late 1840s the Bonds worked on developing photographic techniques for astronomy, with success in 1850. In 1857 George Bond became the first person to photograph a double star, Mizar, with the aid of wet collodion plates. He suggested that a star's magnitude could be quantitatively determined by measuring the size of the image it made. A bright star would affect a greater area of silver grains. |
| Bond also made numerous studies of comets. He discovered 11 new comets and made calculations on the factors affecting their orbits. |
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