William+Herschel

On March 13, 1781, William Herschel, while conducting a general survey of stars and planets, discovered Uranus. At first Herschel thought that he had discovered a nebula but after careful observation he noticed that this particular nebula was moving with stars in its background. Thinking that it must belong in the Solar System, Herschel reasoned that it must be a comet. Upon further observation, which took about six months (1), Herschel realized that he wasn’t looking at a comet at all. He was actually looking at the seventh planet in our Solar System. (2) A planet that was twice as far from the Sun as Saturn (3).
 * Catherine Grogan **
 * William Frederick Herschel **
 * November 15, 1738 – August 25, 1822 **

William Frederick Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany on November 15, 1738 and was named Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. At the time of his birth, Germany was under the rule of King George II of England (7). As a young boy he began training as a musician and assumed that he would follow his father and become the bandleader for the Hanoverian army. It was the Seven Years War that changed his mind and led him to move to England at age 19 (1) where he first became a music copier, then a teacher of music, then a performer and then a composer and organist at the chapel in Bath(5).
 * Who Is This Man Who Discovered the Seventh Planet of Our Solar System **

Herschel knew that being a musician, even a thoroughly skilled one, would not satisfy him forever. He decided that he would try to understand musical theory and read “Harmonics” by Robert Smith which he found very interesting. He later decided to read Smith’s “A Compleat System of Opticks.” Reading this peaked Herschel’s curiosity about lenses and telescopes, enough that he started to observe stars and planets. As a young boy, Herschel was an avid stargazer and he became fascinated with the celestial phenomena beyond our Solar System. (1) (5) Over time, this new hobby turned into an acute interest. Herschel was in his mid-30s before he developed this passion for astronomy. He was joined in his new found love of the universe by his sister, Caroline, and his brother, Alexander, and together they studied the heavens. At the time that they began their amateur astronomy findings, Herschel and his siblings existed on their meager wages. They observed the universe for long, long periods of time while working to support what many would call a costly and arduous hobby. After finding Uranus though, astronomy became their full time jobs thanks to the generosity of King George III. So impressed with Herschel’s finding of the planet, King George III rewarded Herschel with a pension and a small stipend for his siblings. This afforded Herschel the means to pursue his passion for astronomy full-time. (3, 6) King George also made Herschel a member of the prestigious science club called the Royal society and appointed Herschel to be the King’s Astronomer. (1) Herschel in turn wanted to name the new found planet after King George and Uranus’ initial name was Georgium Sidus (George’s Star). (4) This idea didn’t go over well with the science world outside of England (3) so Herschel decided to keep with the Greek mythology theme and named his new planet Uranus.

the William Herschel Museum, Bath" link="@http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Herschel#Uranus"]] ** At the beginning of his astronomical pursuits, Herschel, who was not a man of extraordinary means, could not afford expensive telescopes. But even if he had the means, the telescopes available at the time were not to his satisfaction. They were not strong enough to study objects at great distances or acute enough to distinguish all that he felt the universe had for viewing. So Herschel began to make his own telescopes. His first telescope was a 6 foot long reflector. Turning almost every room in his house into a workshop and observatory, Herschel built telescope after telescope. Entries in his journal claim that Herschel made not less than 200 7 feet, 150 10 feet and about 80 20 feet mirrors. (6) Each telescope was more powerful than the last. He became so adept and skilled at making them, that his telescopes eventually became better than those at the Greenwich Observatory which was the center of astronomical observation in England. (5) Herschel built his last telescope in 1789. It was a 40 foot long telescope with a 49 inch mirror through which he discovered two of Saturn’s moons. (1) Until 1969, this telescope was the largest telescope in England. (4)
 * Herschel and His Obsession with Telescopes[[image:HerschelTelescope.jpg width="242" height="327" align="right" caption="Replica of the telescope with which Herschel discovered Uranus in

Discovering Uranus is Herschel’s biggest claim to fame but he also discovered many other astronomical phenomena. In 1774, Herschel started to document his observations and he has had quite an amazing career as both an amateur and professional astronomer.
 * Other Discoveries Made by William Herschel **

Herschel’s most significant achievements were in the area of sidereal astronomy. He is the first astronomer to be credited with a thorough and systematic body of evidence on the order and nature of the stars and the planets. There were many theories made by philosophers of the time but none of them had gathered any scientific data that could support these theories. His evidence proved that there were celestial objects beyond the solar system. (8) Herschel’s years of trying to find nebulae (clouds of gas or dust) in the sky produced a whopping total of 2,500 before his search was complete. Before starting his survey, the world only knew of a little more than 100. Herschel’s work on nebulae led him to conclude that there might very well be other solar systems. (4) As a result, Herschel supported the theory that the Milky Way and the Earth were only a rather insignificant part of the Universe. (8) He challenged the popular theory that the Milky Way was the center of the universe and documented and charted his observations for years. It was Herschel’s findings that changed the status of our solar system within the Universe much the same way that Copernicus changed the status of the Earth when he showed that the planets revolved around the sun rather than the Earth. (8, 9)

Much of Herschel’s life was devoted to the study of the sun. (9) He determined the motion of the Sun and solar system in the direction of the constellation Hercules (3) and discovered the intrinsic motion of the Sun in space (6). He spent years calibrating chemical analysis of its light spectrum and the measurement of its radiation. (4) Herschel also discovered that the sun we see is not the sun itself but clouds of gases over its surface. (7) He discovered the new moon of Saturn (4) and Uranus’ two largest moons, Titania and Oberon. (10)

Inspired by a treatise on optics written by the seventeenth-century English mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton, Herschel began to study the stars. (7) His surveys produced 848 sets of double stars – pairs of stars that revolve around each other, each drawn by the other’s gravity (9) - which he categorized over 40 years (1). Herschel was able to demonstrate this shared orbit for some of the stars, providing the first proof that the law of gravity operated outside the solar system. (9) He also theorized that stars originally were randomly scattered throughout the universe and that over time they had come together in clusters. (1)

Herschel is also credited with the discovery of infrared radiation, energy dispersed from its source in the form of waves or particles (7) and he was also the first astronomer to conduct a scientific survey of the Milky Way using this information to map it out. (1)

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William Herschel is known as one of the greatest observational astronomers of all time (3) and the founder of modern quantitative astronomy. (5) He made his discoveries by systematically taking each piece of the cosmic world apart bit by bit. He devoted many years to studying Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, determining their rotation period and checking the inclination of their axes, their shape and the nature of their atmospheres. (11) He did surveys, documented his work and cataloged thousands of double stars, star clusters and nebulae. (7)
 * His Legacy Lives On **

Herschel was knighted in 1816. Before dying in 1822, he had received numerous honors from states and academies all over the world. His son John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) continued his father’s studies of nebulae and also became a pioneer in the development of photography. (5)

(1.) “William Herschel.” Astronomy & Space: From the Big Bang to the Big Crunch. Online. U*X*L, 2008.
 * Resources **

(2.) New Scientist, Nov 4 2000 v168 i2263 p 58

(3.) Astronomy, August 2008 v36 i8 p16

(4.) Astronomy, June 2007 v35 i6 p38

(5.) “Frederick William Herschel, Sir.” Science and its Times, Vol. 4 1700-1799. Gale Group, 2001.

(6.) “William Herschel, Sir.” Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.

(7.) “William Herschel.” Scientists: Their Lives and Works, Vols. 1-7. Online Edition U*X*L, 2006

(8.) “William Herschel, Sir.” World of Earth Science. Online. Thomson Gale, 2006.

(9.) “The Hershel Family.” Earth Sciences for Students. 4 vols. Online. Macmillan Reference USA, 2008.

(10.) Astronomy, Jan 2009 v37 i1 p 16

(11.) “William Herschel.” World of Physics. Online. Thomson Gale, 2006.

“William Herschel.” World of Scientific Discovery. Online. Thomson Gale, 2006 Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010 William Herschel Picture - [] Telescopes Picture - [] Uranus Picture - [] What is infrared? - youtube