The Herschel Family
Sir William Herschel was the first of the influential Herschel family to become involved in astronomy. His sister Caroline Lucretia and his son Sir John Frederick William also got involved in different aspects of astronomy. Sir William Herschel was born in 1738 as Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. He was born in Hanover, Germany. His father was a musician, which led to William becoming skilled on several instruments at a young age. He became a band boy in the Hanoverian Guards because of his father's influence in music. In 1757, he moved to England to work as a musical conductor, an organist, and a music teacher. While in England, he also studied math and astronomy in his spare time. Because of his interest in astronomy, Herschel began constructing telescopes and studying the sky. Herschel built a larger telescope with the help of his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander. On March 13, 1781, Herschel made his most important observation from a 7-inch reflecting telescope. He noticed an unusual object in the sky that presented an extended disk-like shape. He thought that he had discovered a comet. Herschel continued his observations of this "comet" and began calculations that lasted for months. He discovered that the
He also concluded that the whole solar system is moving through space and he was able to indicate the point at which he thought it was moving. He also discovered nearly 1,000 double stars. He published this catalog, and of the 5,097 objects, he and his father discovered 4,630 of them. In his lifetime, he confirmed Sir William's observations of double stars and added a number of previous unrecognizable pairs to add to the catalog. His first career was as a mathematician at Cambridge, but later he turned to astronomy. He wrote books on astronomy entitled Outlines of Astronomy, published in 1849, and A General Catalog of Nebulas, published in 1864. By doing this, he was able to observe objects in a thin east-west strip of sky. John Herschel catalogued his and his father's discoveries in 1864. " Sir William Herschel's observations are numerous, and his discoveries are extremely impressive, even by today's standards. During these observations, he discovered large quantities of faint light. After his discovery, he was granted a pension of 200 pounds a year by King George III and knighted by him. He originally named the new planet "Georgium Sidus" to be named after George III, but it was eventually named Uranus after the god of the skies. In 1798, she revised John Flamsteed's catalog of stars.
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