William Herschel: Biography from Answers.com

The German-born English astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738-1822) discovered the planet Uranus, the intrinsic motion of the sun in space, and the form of the Milky Way.

William (originally Friedrich Wilhelm) Herschel was born in Hanover on Nov. 15, 1738. His father was a musician in the Hanoverian guard, which William joined at the age of 14.

In 1757 Herschel went to England. In Yorkshire he conducted a small military band, and from 1762 to 1766 he was a concert manager in Leeds. His notebook of 1766 has these laconic entries: "Feb. 19. Wheatly. Observation of Venus" and "Feb. 24. Eclipse of the moon at 7 o'clock A.M. Kirby." These are the first signs of Herschel's future interests. By the end of the year he became organist at the fashionable spa town of Bath. In 1772 his sister, Caroline Lucretia Herschel, came to live with him at Bath. She collaborated with her brother on astronomical researches.

Not until 1773 is there another scientific entry in Herschel's notebooks: "April 19. Bought a quadrant and Emerson's Trigonometry." That this entry heralded a new phase in his life is shown by the fact that it is followed by others of a similar nature: "Bought a book of astronomy … bought an object glass … bought many eye glasses … hire of a 2 feet reflecting telescope." These entries show that he was proposing to make his first (metal) telescope mirror.

Herschel's First Telescope

Obsessed with astronomy, Herschel progressed through pasteboard and tin-tubed telescopes to a hired Gregorian reflector. When he tried to buy a much larger reflecting telescope in London, he could find nothing suitable which he could afford. For this reason he began to build his own. By September 1774 he was observing the heavens with a (Newtonian) reflecting telescope of 6-foot focal length of his own construction.

Herschel now entered into a long and tedious period of his life, when he and his brother and sister worked away at grinding and polishing telescope mirrors. He had to keep the mirror moving unceasingly on the grinding tool for long periods of time. His sister fed him as he worked. Some idea of his astonishing industry may be had from his statement, made in 1795, that he had made "not less than 200 7 feet, 150 10 feet and about 80 20 feet mirrors." Of the various mountings he devised for these, he was very pleased with a 7-foot Newtonian telescope stand, completed in 1778.

Early Observations

Herschel began to keep a record of what he saw in the heavens from March 1, 1774. He observed the rings of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, and the markings of the moon. It is interesting to see how in his eagerness to make novel discoveries he was deluded into thinking that he had found signs of a forest on the moon, even supposing that he could make out the shadows cast by the trees at the edge of the wood. His next lunar observations were 3 years later, when he began to calculate the height of the lunar mountains.

This self-taught astronomer of Bath was by his own efforts soon to be transmuted into the world's leading observational astronomer. He possessed instruments as powerful as any to be found and all the perseverance needed to use them effectively. In 1777 he began observations of a well-known but neglected star, Mira Ceti, which varies in brightness periodically. Soon he had the idea of determining the annual parallax of stars (the shift in the apparent relative positions of the stars as the earth goes around the sun). Whether the stars were so far away as to make this apparent movement unobservable was not then known. In fact, no annual parallax was measured until 1838, when Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel measured that of star 61 Cygni. Herschel, nevertheless, observed the relative positions of pairs of stars close together (called double stars). He measured hundreds of double stars, but in March 1778 he recorded his disappointment at finding "the stars in the tail of Ursa Major just as I saw them three months ago, at least not visibly different."

Discovery of Uranus

In recording double stars systematically, on March 13, 1781, Herschel entered a pair of which "the lowest of the two is a curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet." Four days later he looked for the object and found that it had moved. He recorded the new position of the "comet" and proceeded to follow it regularly. What he had discovered was the planet Uranus, as it is now known - the first planet to be discovered in historical times.

Herschel was given the Copley Medal of the Royal Society and elected a fellow. Col. John Walsh wrote to him that he had spoken with the king, George III, and had taken "occasion to mention that you had a twofold claim as a Native of Hanover and a Resident of Great Britain, where the Discovery was made, to be permitted to name the Planet from his Majesty." The planet was thus at first called "Georgium sidus" ("star George"), and it appears in this form on early maps and models.

King's Patronage

George III asked Herschel to move his telescope to an observatory the King had built in the Deer Park at Richmond. Herschel moved to Windsor, near the King's residence, and in due course was given the patronage for which he had long hoped - a salary for himself and his sister, upkeep for the telescope, and later a very large sum for a 40-foot telescope, the largest ever made before the mid-19th century.

Herschel eventually settled at Slough, where he wrote the paper announcing his second great discovery, "Motion of the Solar System in Space" (1783). He carefully noted the proper motions of seven bright stars and showed that the movement in the intervening time seemed to converge on a fixed point, which he interpreted correctly as the point from which the sun is receding. Other discoveries followed. He found that "Georgium sidus" had satellites. Some of those he discovered are now known to be spurious, but the difficulties of observing, especially with the crude mounting available to him, were very great.

Structure of the Universe

Many double stars are seen as such merely because they happen to be in a straight line as seen from the earth. Herschel reasoned that if one member of a double-star system was much brighter than the other this must be the result of such a coincidence, the brighter star of the pair being much the closer of the two. He continued to record the relative positions of all such systems, and in 1782 and 1785 he presented long lists of his observations. He was, of course, assuming that the stars were all more or less uniformly bright, intrinsically speaking, and that they were uniformly distributed throughout space. This being so, he believed that by taking counts of stars over a given small area of sky the number of stars visible would give him the extent of the Milky Way in that direction. He thus formulated a picture or map of the Milky Way, which was quite remarkable in his time, and which even now is not wildly wrong.

Later Years

In 1788 Herschel married Mary Pitt, a wealthy widow, by whom he had his only son. Herschel was able to make a useful additional income by selling telescopes, and he invested money in building machines to help grind mirrors. He corresponded with the leading astronomers of England and Europe and received many distinguished visitors at Slough who were anxious to see the telescope he had completed on Aug. 28, 1789; it had a 40-foot focal length and 4-foot aperture.

Herschel was knighted in 1816 and received honors from states and academies the world over. He died at Slough on Aug. 25, 1822.

William Herschel

Born	15 November 1738(1738-11-15) Hanover, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Holy Roman Empire
Died	25 August 1822(1822-08-25) (aged 83) Slough, Berkshire, England
Nationality	German; later British
Fields	Astronomy and Music
Known for	Discovery of Uranus, discovery of infrared radiation, deep sky surveys
Notable awards	Copley Medal
Signature

Memorial

Sir William Herschel lived most of his life in Slough, a town in Berkshire, England. He died in the town and was buried under the tower of St Laurence's Church, Upton, Slough. Herschel is very much respected in the town as evidenced by a number of memorials to him and his discoveries.

In 2011 a new Bus Station, whose design was inspired by the infrared experiment of Sir William Herschel was built in the centre of Slough. The Shopping centre in the town, 'The Observatory', also comes in memory of him.

Early life and musical activities

Herschel was born in Hanover, Electorate of Hanover one of ten children of Isaak and Anna Ilse, née Moritzen, Herschel. His father was of Jewish descent^[2] and an oboist in the Hannover Military Band. In 1755 the Hannoverian Guards regiment, in whose band Wilhelm and his brother Jakob were engaged as oboists, was ordered to England. At the time the crowns of Great Britain and Hannover were united under George II. As the threat of war with France loomed, the Hannoverian Guard was recalled from England to defend Hannover. After the Hannoverian guard was defeated at the Battle of Hastenbeck, Herschel's father Isaak sent his two sons to seek refuge in England in late 1757. Although his older brother Jakob had received his dismissal from the Hannoverian Guard, Wilhelm was accused of desertion,^[3] (for which he was pardoned by George III in 1782).^[4] Wilhelm, nineteen years old at this time, was a quick student of the English language. In England he went by the English rendition of his name, Frederick William Herschel.

He played the cello and harpsichord in addition to the oboe and later the organ. He composed numerous musical works, including 24 symphonies and many concertos, as well as some church music. Six of his symphonies are available in excellent recordings made in 2003 by the London Mozart Players, conducted by Matthias Bamert (Chandos 10048).

Herschel moved to Sunderland in 1761 when Charles Avison immediately engaged him as first violin and soloist for his Newcastle orchestra, where he played for one season. In ‘Sunderland in the County of Durham 20 April 1761’ he wrote his symphony no. 8 in C minor. He was head of the Durham Militia band 1760–61 and visited the home of Sir Ralph Milbanke at Halnaby Hall in 1760, where he wrote two symphonies, as well as giving performances himself.

After Newcastle he moved to Leeds and Halifax where he was the first organist at St John the Baptist church. He became organist of the Octagon Chapel, Bath, a fashionable chapel in a well-known spa, in which town he was also Director of Public Concerts. He was appointed as the organist in 1766 and gave his introductory concert on 1 January 1767. As the organ was still incomplete he showed off his versatility by performing his own compositions including a violin concerto, an oboe concerto and a harpsichord sonata. The organ was completed in October 1767.^[5] His sister Caroline came to England in 1772 and lived with him there in New King Street. His brothers Dietrich, Alexander and Jakob (1734–1792) also appeared as musicians of Bath. In 1780, Herschel was appointed director of the Bath orchestra, with his sister often appearing as soprano soloist.

Astronomy

Replica in the William Herschel Museum, Bath, of a telescope similar to that with which Herschel discovered Uranus

Herschel's music led him to an interest in mathematics and lenses. His interest in astronomy grew stronger after he made the acquaintance of the English Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne. He started building his own reflecting telescopes and would spend up to 16 hours a day grinding and polishing the speculum metal primary mirrors.^[6] He "began to look at the planets and the stars" in May, 1773 and on 1 March 1774 began an astronomical journal by noting his observations of Saturn's rings and the Great Orion Nebula (M 42).

Double Stars

Herschel's early observational work soon focused on the search for visually very close pairs of stars. Astronomers of the era expected that changes over time in the apparent separation and relative location of these stars would provide evidence both for the proper motion of stars and, by means of parallax shifts in their separation, for the distance of stars from the Earth (a method first suggested by Galileo Galilei).^[7] From the back garden of his house in New King Street, Bath and using a 6.2-inch aperture (160 mm), 7-foot focal length (2.1 m) (f/13) Newtonian telescope "with a most capital speculum" of his own manufacture,^[8] Herschel began a systematic search for these stars among "every star in the Heavens" in October, 1779 and continued listing discoveries through 1792. He soon discovered many more binary and multiple stars than expected, and compiled them with careful measurements of their relative positions in two catalogues presented to the Royal Society, London in 1782 (269 double or multiple systems) and 1784 (434 systems). A third catalogue of discoveries made after 1783 was published in 1821 (145 systems). In 1797 Herschel measured many of the systems again, and discovered changes in their relative positions that could not be attributed to the parallax caused by the Earth's orbit. He waited until 1802 (in Catalogue of 500 new Nebulae, nebulous Stars, planetary Nebulae, and Clusters of Stars; with Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens) to announce the hypothesis that the two stars might be "binary sidereal systems" orbiting under mutual gravitational attraction, a hypothesis he confirmed in 1803 in his Account of the Changes that have happened, during the last Twenty-five Years, in the relative Situation of Double-stars; with an Investigation of the Cause to which they are owing. In all, Herschel discovered over 800 confirmed^[9] double or multiple star systems, almost all of them physical rather than virtual pairs. His theoretical and observational work provided the foundation for modern binary star astronomy; new catalogues adding to his work were not published until after 1820 by Friedrich Wilhelm Struve, James South and John Herschel.

Uranus

In March, 1781, during his search for double stars, Herschel noticed an object appearing as a nonstellar disk.^[10] Herschel originally thought it was a comet or a star. He made many more observations of it, and afterwards Russian Academician Anders Lexell computed the orbit and found it to be probably planetary.^[11] Herschel determined in agreement that it must be a planet beyond the orbit of Saturn.^[12] He called the new planet the 'Georgian star' (Georgium sidus) after King George III, which also brought him favour; the name didn't stick, however. In France, where reference to the British king was to be avoided if possible, the planet was known as 'Herschel' until the name 'Uranus' was universally adopted. The same year, Herschel was awarded the Copley Medal and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1782, he was appointed "The King’s Astronomer" (not to be confused with the Astronomer Royal). He and his sister subsequently moved to Datchet (then in Buckinghamshire but now in Berkshire) on 1 August 1782. He continued his work as a telescope maker and achieved an international reputation for their manufacture, profitably selling over 60 completed reflectors to British and Continental astronomers.^[13]

Deep Sky Surveys

From 1782 to 1802, and most intensively from 1783 to 1790, Herschel conducted systematic surveys in search of "deep sky" or nonstellar objects with two 20-foot focal length (610 cm), 12-inch aperture (30 cm) and 18.7-inch aperture (47 cm) telescopes (in combination with his favoured 6 inch aperture instrument). Excluding duplicated and "lost" entries, Herschel ultimately discovered over 2400 objects defined by him as nebulae. (At that time, nebula was the generic term for any visually extended or diffuse astronomical object, including galaxies beyond the Milky Way, until galaxies were confirmed as extragalactic systems by Edwin Hubble in 1924.) Herschel published his discoveries as three catalogues: Catalogue of One Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (1786), Catalogue of a Second Thousand New Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (1789) and the previously cited Catalogue of 500 New Nebulae ... (1802). He arranged his discoveries under eight "classes": (I) bright nebulae, (II) faint nebulae, (III) very faint nebulae, (IV) planetary nebulae, (V) very large nebulae, (VI) very compressed and rich clusters of stars, (VII) compressed clusters of small and large [faint and bright] stars, and (VIII) coarsely scattered clusters of stars. Herschel's discoveries were supplemented by those of Caroline Herschel (11 objects) and his son John Herschel (1754 objects) and published by him as General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters in 1864. This catalogue was later edited by John Dreyer, supplemented with discoveries by many other 19th century astronomers, and published in 1888 as the New General Catalogue (abbreviated NGC) of over 6200 deep sky objects. The NGC numbering is still the most commonly used identifying label for these celestial landmarks.

Work with his sister Caroline

In 1783 he gave Caroline a telescope, and she began to make astronomical discoveries in her own right, particularly comets. She discovered eight comets, eleven nebulae and, at her brother's suggestion, updated and corrected Flamsteed's work detailing the position of stars. This was published as the British Catalogue of Stars. She was honoured by the Royal Astronomical Society for this work. Caroline also continued to serve as his assistant, often taking notes while he observed at the telescope.

In June 1785, owing to damp conditions, he and Caroline moved to Clay Hall in Old Windsor. In 1786, the Herschels moved to a new residence on Windsor Road in Slough. He lived the rest of his life in this residence, which came to be known as Observatory House. It is no longer standing.

On 7 May 1788, he married the widow Mary Pitt (née Baldwin) at St Laurence's Church, Upton in Slough. His sister Caroline then moved to separate lodgings, but continued to work as his assistant.

Herschel's telescopes

The 40-foot (12 m) telescope

Further discoveries

**Planets discovered: 1**
Uranus	13 March 1781

**Moons discovered: 4**
Oberon	11 January 1787
Titania	11 January 1787
Enceladus	28 August 1789
Mimas	17 September 1789

In his later career, Herschel discovered two moons of Saturn, Mimas and Enceladus; as well as two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon. He did not give these moons their names; they were named by his son John in 1847 and 1852, respectively, well after his death.

Recently, some evidence has been cited by Dr. Stuart Eves that Herschel might have discovered rings around Uranus.^[14]

Herschel measured the axial tilt of the planet Mars and discovered that the martian ice caps, first observed by Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1666) and Christiaan Huygens (1672), changed size with the planet's seasons.

From studying the proper motion of stars, he was the first to realise that the solar system is moving through space, and he determined the approximate direction of that movement. He also studied the structure of the Milky Way and concluded that it was in the shape of a disk.

He also coined the word "asteroid", meaning star-like (from the Greek asteroeides, aster "star" + -eidos "form, shape"), in 1802 (shortly after Olbers discovered the second minor planet, 2 Pallas, in late March of the same year), to describe the star-like appearance of the small moons of the giant planets and of the minor planets; the planets all show discs, by comparison. However, it was not until the 1850s that 'asteroid' became a standard term for describing certain minor planets.

As part of his attempts to determine if there was a link between solar activity and the terrestrial climate, Herschel also collected records of the price of wheat, as direct meteorological measurements were not available for a sufficient period. He theorised that the price of wheat would be linked to the harvest and hence to the weather over the year. This attempt was unsuccessful due to the lack of previous solar observations against which to compare the wheat prices, but similar techniques were used later with success.^[15]

Despite his numerous important scientific discoveries, Herschel was not averse to wild speculation. In particular, he believed every planet was inhabited,^[16] even the Sun: he believed that the Sun had a cool, solid surface protected from its hot atmosphere by an opaque layer of cloud, and that a race of beings adapted to their strange environment lived there and had enormous heads. He believed the creatures' heads must be exceptionally large because his calculations showed that under those conditions a normal sized head would effectively explode. The original belief of life-forms inhabiting the Sun came from the sight and movement of sunspots on the surface of the Sun.^{[citation needed]}

Discovery of infrared radiation in sunlight

On 11 February 1800, Herschel was testing filters for the sun so he could observe sun spots. When using a red filter he found there was a lot of heat produced. Herschel discovered infrared radiation in sunlight by passing it through a prism and holding a thermometer just beyond the red end of the visible spectrum. This thermometer was meant to be a control to measure the ambient air temperature in the room. He was shocked when it showed a higher temperature than the visible spectrum. Further experimentation led to Herschel's conclusion that there must be an invisible form of light beyond the visible spectrum.

Biology

Herschel used a microscope to establish that coral had the characteristic thin cell walls of an animal, instead of it being a plant, as many believed.^[6]

Family and death

William Herschel and Mary had one child, John, born at Observatory House on 7 March 1792. In 1816, William was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order by the Prince Regent entitling him to the prefix 'Sir'. He helped to found the Astronomical Society of London in 1820, which in 1831 received a royal charter and became the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1813, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

On 25 August 1822, Herschel died at Observatory House, Windsor Road, Slough, and is buried at nearby St Laurence's Church, Upton. His son John Herschel also became a famous astronomer. One of William's brothers, Alexander Herschel, moved permanently to England, near his sister Caroline and nephew John. Caroline returned to Hanover, Germany after the death of her brother. She died on 9 January 1848.^[17]

His house at 19 New King Street in Bath, Somerset where he made many telescopes and first observed Uranus, is now home to the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.

Named after Herschel

William Herschel

The symbol for planet Uranus () features Herschel's surname capital letter.
Mu Cephei, two of the largest known stars in the universe, is also known as Herschel's Garnet Star
Herschel, a crater on the Moon
Herschel, a large impact basin on Mars
The enormous crater Herschel on Saturn's moon Mimas
2000 Herschel, an asteroid
The William Herschel Telescope on La Palma
The Herschel Space Observatory, successfully launched by the European Space Agency on 14 May 2009. It is the largest space telescope of its kind
Herschel Grammar School, Slough
Rue Herschel, a street in the 6th Arrondissement of Paris.
The Herschel Building at City of Bath College, Bath
The Herschel building at Newcastle University, Newcastle, United Kingdom
Herschel Museum of Astronomy
Herschelschule, Hanover, Germany, a grammar school
Herschel, Saskatchewan, Canada is a small, rural village that is home to the Ancient Echoes Interpretative Centre
The Herschel Observatory, from the school Universitas in Santos, Brazil.
The lunar crater C. Herschel, the asteroid 281 Lucretia, and the comet 35P/Herschel-Rigollet are named after his sister Caroline Herschel.
A public house in Slough is named after him and is quite close to the site of Observatory House. Herschel Arms, 22 Park Street, Slough, Berkshire SL1 1PS
Herschel Astronomical Society who operate the Herschel Memorial Observatory based in Eton, Berkshire.
Herschel Park, Slough.
New Slough Bus Station shape was inspired by his infrared experiement of Sir William Herschel. The Bus Station was built in 2011.

Notes

^ Caroline Herschel's autobiographies (M. Hoskin ed., 2003) page 13
^ JewishEncyclopedia.com: "Herschel, Sir William" by Joseph Jacobs
^ Hoskin, M. (2004). "Was William Herschel a deserter?". Journal for the History of Astronomy 35, Part 3 (120): 356–358. Bibcode 2004JHA....35..356H.
^ Clerke, Agnes M (1908), A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century (4 (republished as eBook number 28247) ed.), London (republished eText): Adam and Charles Black (republished Project Gutenberg), p. 18, archived from the original on 4 March 2009, http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?pageno=18&fk_files=1551958
^ "Bath". The British Society for the History of Mathematics. http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/bshm/zingaz/B.html#bath. Retrieved 18 July 2009.
^ ^a ^b The Light of Reason 8 August 2006 02:00 BBC Four
^ Aitken, Robert. The Binary Stars. McGraw-Hill, 1935. pp. 4–9
^ Mullaney, p. 10
^ William Herschel's Double Star Catalog. Handprint.com (2011-01-05). Retrieved on 5 June 2011.
^ National Air and Space Museum – Discovering New Planets. Nasm.si.edu (1930-01-23). Retrieved on 5 June 2011.
^ Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The University of Chicago Press, 1970. p. 115
^ Astronomical League National – Herschel Club – Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. Astroleague.org. Retrieved on 5 June 2011.
^ Mullaney, p. 14
^ Rincon, Paul (18 April 2007). "Uranus rings 'were seen in 1700s'". BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/6569849.stm.
^ Holden 1881, pp. 201–2
^ The idea of life on our neighbour planet [Mars] has inspired humans for a long time. The British astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738–1822) assumed that there are intelligent beings not only on Mars, but on all planets in our solar system Mars in Rekordnähe zur Erde
^ Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (1738–1822). Manfredholl.de. Retrieved on 5 June 2011.

References

Holmes, Richard. The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science (2009) ISBN 978-1-4000-3187-0
"William Herschel" by Michael Hoskin. New dictionary of Scientific Biography Scribners, 2008. v. 3, pp. 289–291.
Holden, Edward S. (1881). Sir William Herschel His Life and Works. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Mullaney, James (2007). The Herschel objects and how to observe them. p. 10. ISBN 9780387681245. http://books.google.com/books?id=HFg2sOjrFtsC&pg=PA10. Retrieved 5 June 2011.
Biography: JRASC 74 (1980) 134

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Herschel

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: William Herschel

William Herschel's Deep Sky Catalog
The William Herschel Double Star Catalogs Restored
Full text of The Story of the Herschels (1886) from Project Gutenberg
Portraits of William Herschel at the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom)
Herschel Museum of Astronomy located in his Bath home
William Herschel Society
The Oboe Concertos of Sir William Herschel, Wilbert Davis Jerome ed. ISBN 0871692252
Works by or about William Herschel in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
A notebook of Herschel's, dated from 1759 is available in the digital collections of the Linda Hall Library.

Authority control: VIAF: 19885773

v d e Copley Medallists

John Canton (1751) John Pringle (1752) Benjamin Franklin (1753) William Lewis (1754) John Huxham (1755) Charles Cavendish (1757) John Dollond (1758) John Smeaton (1759) Benjamin Wilson (1760) John Canton (1764) William Brownrigg / Edward Delaval / Henry Cavendish (1766) John Ellis (1767) Peter Woulfe (1768) William Hewson (1769) William Hamilton (1770) Matthew Raper (1771) Joseph Priestley (1772) John Walsh (1773) Nevil Maskelyne (1775) James Cook (1776) John Mudge (1777) Charles Hutton (1778) Samuel Vince (1780) William Herschel (1781) Richard Kirwan (1782) John Goodricke / Thomas Hutchins (1783) Edward Waring (1784) William Roy (1785) John Hunter (1787) Charles Blagden (1788) William Morgan (1789) James Rennell / Jean-André Deluc (1791) Benjamin Thompson (1792) Alessandro Volta (1794) Jesse Ramsden (1795) George Atwood (1796) George Shuckburgh-Evelyn / Charles Hatchett (1798) John Hellins (1799) Edward Charles Howard (1800)

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v d e Uranus

Discovery	William Herschel William Lassell Gerard Kuiper James L. Elliot

Characteristics	Atmosphere Climate (Uranus Dark Spot) Magnetosphere Rings Moons

Major moons	Puck Ariel Miranda Oberon Titania Umbriel

Exploration	Voyager program (Voyager 2) Uranus orbiter and probe (proposed)

Miscellaneous	15 Orionis Uranus-crossing minor planets Uranus in fiction

Uranus portal

Persondata
Name	Herschel, Friedrich Wilhelm
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	15 November 1738
Place of birth	Hanover, Brunswick-Lüneburg, Holy Roman Empire
Date of death	25 August 1822
Place of death	Slough, Berkshire, England

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William Herschel

John Frederick William Herschel