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Howard Bond is an Astronomer at the Space
Telescope Science Institute, and a co-founder
of the Hubble
Heritage project.
He acquired the astronomy bug at about the age
of 10, when his father pointed out some of the constellations
above his hometown of Bethesda, Maryland, and is
still addicted more than 4 decades later. After
obtaining an undergraduate degree in physics at
the University of
Illinois, Bond went on to complete a Ph.D. degree
in astronomy at the University
of Michigan, where his thesis work was a large-scale
sky survey for extremely old stars with low contents
of chemical elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
Bond then spent some 15 years teaching astronomy
and physics as a professor in the Department
of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana
State University. In 1984 he jumped at the chance
to join the Space Telescope Science Institute, where
he has remained ever since. From 1991 to 1997 he
served as Managing Editor of the Publications
of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
one of the three major astronomy journals in North
America.
He has had a passionate interest in planetary
nebulae, dating back to his amateur astronomy days.
In an extensive series of studies of the central
stars in planetary nebulae carried out at LSU, Kitt
Peak, and Cerro
Tololo observatories, he and his colleagues
were able to show that a significant fraction of
planetary nebulae are actually ejected because of
interactions of close pairs of stars. Nothing prepared
him, however, for the stunning details within planetary
nebulae that are now being revealed by the Hubble
Space Telescope.
Aside from astronomy, Bond's interests include
classical music, Wagnerian opera, and rafting trips
in the Grand Canyon.
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