Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems: Volume 2: Astronomical Techniques, Software, and Data

This is volume 2 of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems, a six-volume compendium of modern astronomical research, covering subjects of key interest to the main fields of contemporary astronomy. This volume on “Astronomical Techniques, Software, and Data” edited by Howard E. Bond presents accessible review chapters on Astronomical Photometry, Astronomical Spectroscopy, Infrared Astronomy Fundamentals, Astronomical Polarimetry: Polarized Views of Stars and Planets, Sky Surveys,Techniques of Radio Astronomy,Radio and Optical Interferometry: Basic Observing Techniques and Data Analysis, Absolute Calibration of Spectrophotometric Standard Stars,Virtual Observatories, Data Mining, and Astroinformatics, Statistical Methods for Astronomy, Numerical Techniques in Astrophysics .

All chapters of the handbook were written by practicing professionals. They include sufficient background material and references to the current literature to allow readers to learn enough about a specialty within astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology to get started on their own practical research projects. In the spirit of the series Stars and Stellar Systems published by Chicago University Press in the 1960s and 1970s, each chapter of Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems can stand on its own as a fundamental review of its respective sub-discipline, and each volume can be used as a textbook or recommended reference work for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate courses. Advanced students and professional astronomers in their roles as both lecturers and researchers will welcome Planets, Stars and Stellar Systems as a comprehensive and pedagogical reference work on astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology.

Dr. Terry D. Oswalt, an astronomer, is Head of the Department of Physics and Space Sciences and Associate Provost for Research at Florida Institute of Technology. He has also served the U.S. National Science Foundation as program officer for Stellar Astronomy and Astrophysics. He earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy at The Ohio State University specializing in photoelectric and spectroscopic studies of binary star systems, late stages of stellar evolution, minor planets, and comets.

Since coming to Florida Tech in 1982, Dr. Oswalt has taught astronomy and physics, while continuing his primary research interest in studies of collapsed stars called white dwarfs. Because such objects are very faint, this work often takes him to Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, where telescopes as large as 10-meters are available on a competitive basis to scientists.

Oswalt is the founding Chairman of the Southeast Association for Research in Astronomy, a consortium of 10 universities which operates an automated 1-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. In 2007 SARA will assume operations of a similar telescope at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. Oswalt also has been director of the SARA summer internship program, which brings undergraduate students from around the U.S. to the SARA facility at Kitt Peak each summer to do research in astronomy. Dr. Oswalt has written over 100 scientific articles and edits the I.A.P.P.P. Communications, an international journal for advanced amateurs, students, teachers and professionals who collaborate on research and educational projects in astronomy. He is also the editor for a three-volume set of Springer books, "The Future of Small Telescopes in the New Millennium".

Dr. Bond received his PhD in astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1969.

From 1970 to 1984 he was a faculty member in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Louisiana State University. In 1984 he moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, which manages the scientific programs of the Hubble Space Telescope. At STScI, Dr. Bond helped develop the peer-review procedures for Hubble observers. He managed the Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship Program from 1994 to 2002. He was a co-founder of the Hubble Heritage Project, which makes the most spectacular HST images available to the public, and has received both the Klumpke-Roberts Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and the Education Prize of the American Astronomical Society. Dr. Bond was involved in the development of the Wide Field Camera 3 for the Hubble telescope, serving on the WFC3 Scientific Oversight Committee from 1998 to the present.

Dr. Bond's research interests are in observational stellar astronomy. He has published over 500 scientific papers, concentrating particularly on planetary nebulae and their central stars, white dwarfs, stellar chemical compositions, binary stars, and transient astrophysical phenomena. He is an active user of the Hubble Space Telescope, having received observing time on the telescope in all 20 peer-review cycles.

Bond served as Councilor of the American Astronomical Society from 1987 to 1989, and was Managing Editor of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific from 1991 to 1997.  In 2008, he became Astronomer Emeritus at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and is currently continuing his research programs as an independent contractor and consultant.