How Did William Herschel Study Astronomy

In the book, it talks about how William Herschel loved music almost as much as he loved Astronomy. He studied books on Astronomy and tried to observe the night sky with his small telescope. He became frustrated because it was not very effective. Due to this frustration, he built a better telescope in 1773. He liked to observe the Moon, Sun and other planets and like many had a firm belief that those were inhabited with intelligent life and actively searched for it. He was not like most Astronomers who charted locations and used mathematical equations to study the night sky, he liked to study the evolution of stars and how they changed. Double stars and nebulae motivated him to continually search the night sky. Because of this constant searching and looking for new things, on March 13, 1781 he spotted something in the Constellation Gemini that intrigued him. …show more content…
He wrote to other astronomers about it and claimed it as a comet. Due to the lesser quality of telescopes they had, they could not really see it. Finally, other English and French astronomers were able to see it. A month later Nevil Maskelyne suggested it could be a planet. It took several months of observing, charting and studying for Anders Johan Lexell to calculate an orbit for the so-called comet and he was able to convince most astronomers it was a planet. I am not sure the exact questions that were asked but they had to have been things like, does it have an orbit, what is its pattern, does it evolve, etc. Herschel named the start “George’s Star” after king George lll. Herschel was given an annual salary and quite music to pursue astronomy full time. He made and sold telescopes to many. A lot of people thought the name to English so after some ideas they settled on Uranus, which kept up with the Roman God

Show More

Related Documents: How Did William Herschel Study Astronomy

How Did Maria Mitchell Influence Society