William Herschel's First Discovery Of Astronomy

Born in Germany as Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel, it wasn’t until his was 30 when he discovered what his true passion was. One night while he was looking at the night sky with his sister Caroline, he discovered Uranus and several of moons around other gas giants. While he was alive, he compiled a catalogue of 2,500 celestial objects that are still being used in today’s society. While in his early life he mainly studied music with his sister. His sister, Caroline was the first women to discover a comet, and the first women to get given a paid scientific position and to receive an honorary membership into the Royal Society. William Herschel will come up with the Theory of The Evolution of The Stars.

The discovery of Uranus all started with a hobby of William Herschel. William Herschel was a man from Germany. He was an organist by trade but one of his hobbies was astronomy. He spent time looking at the stars and sky with a telescope. William started recognizing nebulae in space, and not too long after that he started discovering other phenomena. One day he thought he had discovered a comet when in reality it was the planet Uranus.

William Herschel, as an amateur astrologist, first discovered Uranus while carefully searching the sky for double stars. He wanted to compare paired stars and record which was the further of the pair. In the year 1781 he noticed light reflecting off a surface of what he originally thought to be a comet. It wasn’t until the summer 1782 that he first referred to it as “his planet” and then only after multiple correspondences with the Royal Society. With in the correspondence he asked for secondary opinions on the “comet” and many members of the Royal society believed it to be either a comet or a planet. The discover lead to questions such as how far away is it. From there it was discovered that the planet was past Saturn which is how it gained

Caroline Herschel “was a pioneer of her time! She was an educated woman who would catalogue stars and nebula, and discover comets. She would be the first woman astronomer to earn a salary, acquire honors, and be accepted into scientific organizations” (AmazingSpace). She became an instrumental figure in the study of astronomy. Her work and achievements has broken monumental barriers and has expanded our knowledge of astronomy. Some of her work and documentation is still used today, approximately two hundered years later.

A English astronomer named William Herschel, had been using his 40-foot reflector telescope when he had made the discovery of Mimas on

William Herschel discovered Uranus in March of 1781. He discovered this threw a telescope. It was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope. Many other scientist that saw this through a telescope thought that Uranus was just a star, but Herschel was able to identify that one of those stars was an actual planet. He was fascinated with the natural philosophy of light and with the behavior of the eyes was the counterpart of this task.

In 1781 the British astronomer, William Herschel, was doing a survey of all the stars. He noticed an unusual piece of matter in the sky. He later discovered that the matter was the planet Uranus. Since that discovery there has been other discoveries concerning the planet. One of these discoveries has been the discovery of two irregular moons.

Before being known as a planet Uranus was mistaken for a star. Probably the first time that Uranus was observed was by Hipparchus of Nicaea. Hipparchus did mistaken Uranus for a star. Hipparchus may have recorded it as a star for his star catalogue that was later incorporated into Ptolemy's Almagest (1). William Herschel first observed Uranus on March 13, 1781 from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in Bath, Somerset, England. Herschel "engaged in a series of observations on the parallax of the fixed stars." Using a telescope of his own design.

Though Sir Herschel’s discovery on Uranus was ground breaking, he still needed help from Nevil Maskelyne to solve some problems he ran into. Sir Herschel knew that comets had a coma or a tail to them, but Uranus did not, and that is why he reached out to Sir Maskelyne. It took years to solve this problem but when astronomer Anders Johan Lexell studied this so called comet, he discovered that it had an orbit to it, there by concluding that it was not a comet, but a planet. It was only years after this even that our planet Uranus received its name in

The discovery of Uranus on March 13th in 1781 by William Herschel was an accident. He was using his 7ft reflector telescope. He had talked to Joseph Priestly and John Mitchell about the construction. It started as a survey of the stars to “isolate as many double stars as he could discover”. When he spotted Uranus he thought it was a comet.

The discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1781 is a great example of the role of exploration and discovery in science. Herschel was observing and recording stars when he found Uranus. In the Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy, Michael Hoskin stated: “But in 1779 he decided it was time he familiarized himself with the brighter stars, and so he systematically examined them one by one.”1 While investigating stars, William Herschel stumbled upon a new object that moved and he initially thought Uranus was a comet. In his journal, Herschel wrote: “"In the quartile near [Zeta] Tauri the lowest of the two is a curious either Nebulous Star or perhaps a Comet."2 After more observations, calculations, and opposing the preconceived scientific

William Herschel discovered a new slowly moving object in 1781. He thought it was a comet. Other astronomers calculated its orbit and realized the new object was circular, making it a planet. Questions were asked throughout the discovery about if there really was more out there to discover. Many thought it was all discovered and that was the end of it. Finding another planet was extraordinary, but this also opened up many minds to the fact that there is probably more out there past the orbit of Saturn to discover. The possibility of additional planets was not taken seriously, so having that disbelief fueled the scientists even more. This discovery was so surprising due to the fact that space is not somewhere that every individual has access

I selected Astronomy: Discovery of Uranus by William Herschel in 1781. William Herschel was a astronomer at heart. It’s interesting to know that he was a musician and always had a passion in astronomy. His discovery started by scouring the sky with his sister and noticed a small object that over the course of time kept moving. His observation and curiosity started to question what that object could be. He first thought he had discovered a comet. He was determined to figure out what it was and this lead to further observation which revealed that what he saw was a planet. Mr. Herschel was so passionate to the incredible world of astronomy that he began his own sky survey of his own. He would look through his telescope and was able to observe

The discovery of the planet Uranus was created by William Herschel in the year 1781. Herschel was a musician, but at the age of 34, he became interested in astrology. He built his own telescope to observe the stars more clearly. While he was building the telescope he did research, including Robert Smith’s work. He read Smith’s journal of discoveries. He noticed that the star or the comet was appearing as a disk of some sort and he wondered why. As he studied further, he decided that there was more research needed to discover that the star was not a star. It was at this time when he discovered that a celestial body was not a comet or a star but a planet. This was an important discovery because it is another planet in our galaxy that would be

I chose this topic because I have always loved astronomy and looked up in to the night skies. The discovery of planet Uranus was an accident because when William Herschel first saw it, he thought it was a comet. He also believed very strongly in the possibility of extra-terrestrial intelligent life, and he spent many nights with his telescope watching the Moon, Sun, and the planets for signs of it. Prior to his discovery most cultures only had knowledge of the planets we call Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. These five objects were first called planets by the Greeks; planet was the Greek word for wanderer. He wrote of this new finding to astronomers in London but they couldn't see it at first. But eventually the supposed comet was