William Herschel: biography. William Herschel biography What planet did William Herschel discover?

(1738-1822) - founder of stellar astronomy, foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1789). Using the telescopes he made, he carried out systematic surveys of the starry sky, studied star clusters, double stars, and nebulae. He built the first model of the Galaxy, established the movement of the Sun in space, discovered Uranus (1781), its 2 satellites (1787) and 2 satellites of Saturn (1789).

The first attempts to penetrate deeper into the mystery of the structure of the stellar Universe through careful observations using the most powerful telescopes are associated with the name of astronomer William Herschel.

Herschel received an extensive but unsystematic education. Classes in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy revealed his abilities in the exact sciences. But, besides this, Wilhelm had great musical abilities and at the age of fourteen he joined the regimental orchestra as a musician. In 1757, after four years of military service, he left for England, where his brother Jacob, the bandmaster of the Hanoverian regiment, had moved a little earlier.

Without a penny in his pocket, William, renamed William in England, began copying notes in London. In 1766 he moved to Bath, where he soon achieved great fame as a performer, conductor and music teacher. But such a life could not completely satisfy him. Herschel's interest in natural science and philosophy and constant independent education led him to become interested in astronomy. “What a pity that music is not a hundred times more difficult than science, I love activity and I need something to do,” he wrote to his brother.

In 1773, William Herschel acquired a number of works on optics and astronomy. Smith's Complete System of Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy became his reference books. In the same year, he first looked at the sky through a small telescope with a focal length of about 75 cm, but observations with such a low magnification did not satisfy the researcher. Since there was no money to buy a higher-aperture telescope, he decided to make it himself.

Having purchased the necessary tools and blanks, William Herschel independently cast and polished the mirror for his first telescope. Having overcome great difficulties, Herschel in the same 1773 produced a reflector with a focal length of more than 1.5 m. Herschel polished the mirrors by hand (he created a machine for this purpose only fifteen years later), often working for 10, 12 and even 16 hours in a row , since stopping the grinding process deteriorated the quality of the mirror. The work turned out to be not only hard, but also dangerous; one day, while making a blank for a mirror, the melting furnace exploded.

Sister Caroline and brother Alexander were William's faithful and patient assistants in this difficult work. Hard work and enthusiasm yielded excellent results. The mirrors, made by William Herschel from an alloy of copper and tin, were of excellent quality and gave perfectly round images of the stars.

As the famous American astronomer Charles Whitney writes, “from 1773 to 1782, the Herschels were busy transforming from professional musicians into professional astronomers.”

In 1775, William Herschel began his first “sky survey.” At this time, he still continued to earn his living from musical activities, but astronomical observations became his true passion. In between music lessons, he made mirrors for telescopes, gave concerts in the evenings, and spent his nights observing the stars. For this purpose, Herschel proposed an original new method of “star scoops,” that is, counting the number of stars in certain areas of the sky.

On March 13, 1781, while observing, Herschel noticed something unusual: “Between ten and eleven in the evening, while I was studying the faint stars in the neighborhood of N Gemini, I noticed one that looked larger than the rest. Surprised by its unusual size, I compared it with N Gemini and a small star in the square between the constellations Auriga and Gemini, and found that it was significantly larger than either of them. I suspected it was a comet." The object had a pronounced disk and was moving along the ecliptic. After informing other astronomers about the discovery of the “comet,” Herschel continued to observe it.

A few months later, two famous scientists - academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences D.I. Lexel and academician of the Paris Academy of Sciences Pierre Simon Laplace, having calculated the orbit of the open celestial object, proved that Herschel discovered a planet that was located beyond Saturn. The planet, later named Uranus, was almost 3 billion km from the Sun and was more than 60 times the volume of the Earth. For the first time in the history of science, a new planet was discovered, since the previously known five planets had been observed in the sky for centuries. The discovery of Uranus expanded the boundaries of the solar system more than twice and brought fame to its discoverer.

Nine months after the discovery of Uranus, on December 7, 1781, William Herschel was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, and was awarded a doctorate from Oxford University and a gold medal from the Royal Society of London (in 1789, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary member).

The discovery of Uranus shaped Herschel's career. King George III, himself a lover of astronomy and patron of the Hanoverians, appointed him "Astronomer Royal" in 1782 with an annual salary of £200. The king also provided him with funds to build a separate observatory at Slough, near Windsor. Here William Herschel, with youthful fervor and extraordinary constancy, began astronomical observations. According to Arago's biographer, he left the observatory only to present to the royal society the results of his tireless labors.

V. Herschel continued to devote his main attention to improving telescopes. He discarded the second small mirror that had been used until then and thereby significantly increased the brightness of the image. Gradually Herschel increased the diameters of the mirrors. Its pinnacle was a telescope built in 1789, a giant for that time, with a tube 12 m long and a mirror with a diameter of 122 cm. This telescope remained unsurpassed until 1845, when the Irish astronomer W. Parsons built an even larger telescope - almost 18 meters long with a mirror diameter 183 cm.

Using the latest telescope, William Herschel discovered two moons of Uranus and two moons of Saturn. Thus, the discovery of several celestial bodies in the solar system is associated with the name of Herschel. But this is not the main significance of his remarkable activity.

Even before Herschel, several dozen double stars were known, but such stellar pairs were considered as random encounters of their constituent stars, and it was not assumed that double stars were widespread in the Universe. Herschel carefully examined the various parts of the sky for many years and discovered over 400 double stars. He studied the distances between the components (in angular measures), their color and apparent gloss. In some cases, stars previously considered double turned out to be triple and quadruple stars (multiple stars). Herschel came to the conclusion that double and multiple stars are systems of stars physically connected to each other and, as he was convinced, revolving around a common center of gravity, according to the law of universal gravitation.

William Herschel was the first astronomer in the history of science to systematically study double stars. Since ancient times, a bright nebula in the constellation Orion, as well as a nebula in the constellation Andromeda, visible to the naked eye, have been known. But only in the 18th century, as telescopes improved, many nebulae were discovered. Immanuel Kant and Lambert believed that nebulae are entire star systems, other Milky Ways, but removed to colossal distances at which individual stars cannot be distinguished.

V. Herschel did a great job discovering and studying new nebulae. He used the ever-increasing power of his telescopes to do this. Suffice it to say that the catalogs he compiled based on his observations, the first of which appeared in 1786, number about 2,500 nebulae. Herschel's task, however, was not simply to find nebulae, but to reveal their nature. Through his powerful telescopes, many nebulae were clearly divided into individual stars and thus turned out to be star clusters far from the solar system. In some cases, the nebula turned out to be a star surrounded by a nebulous ring. But other nebulae were not divided into stars even with the help of the most powerful - 122-centimeter telescope

At first, Herschel concluded that almost all nebulae are actually collections of stars and the most distant of them will also decompose into stars in the future - when observed with even more powerful telescopes. At the same time, he admitted that some of these nebulae are not star clusters within the Milky Way, but independent star systems. Further research forced William Herschel to deepen and complement his views. The world of nebulae turned out to be more complex and diverse than previously thought.

Continuing to tirelessly observe and reflect, Herschel recognized that many of the observed nebulae could not be decomposed into stars at all, since they consisted of a much more rarefied substance (“luminous liquid,” as Herschel thought) than stars. Thus, Herschel came to the conclusion that nebulous matter, like stars, is widespread in the Universe. Naturally, the question arose about the role of this substance in the Universe, about whether it was the material from which stars arose. Back in 1755, Imanuel Kant put forward a hypothesis about the formation of entire stellar systems from originally existing scattered matter. Herschel proposed the bold idea that different types of indecomposable nebulae represent different stages of star formation. By densifying the nebula, either a whole cluster of stars or one star is gradually formed from it, which at the beginning of its existence is still surrounded by a nebulous envelope. If Kant believed that all the stars of the Milky Way were once formed simultaneously, then Herschel was the first to suggest that the stars have different ages and the formation of stars continues continuously and occurs in our time.

This idea of William Herschel was later forgotten, and the erroneous opinion about the simultaneous origin of all stars in the distant past long dominated science. Only in the second half of the 20th century, based on the enormous successes of astronomy and especially the works of Soviet scientists, differences in the ages of stars were established. Entire classes of stars have been studied that undoubtedly exist for a few millions of years, in contrast to other stars whose age is determined by billions of years. Herschel's views on the nature of nebulae are generally confirmed by modern science, which has established that gas and dust nebulae are widespread in our and other galaxies. The nature of these nebulae turned out to be even more complex than Herschel could have imagined.

At the same time, William Herschel, even at the end of his life, was convinced that some nebulae were distant star systems that would eventually be decomposed into individual stars. And in this he, like Kant and Lambert, turned out to be right.

As already mentioned, in the 18th century the proper motion of many stars was discovered. Herschel, through calculations, managed to convincingly prove in 1783 that our solar system is moving towards the constellation Hercules.

But William Herschel considered his main task to be elucidation of the structure of the Milky Way star system, or our Galaxy, its shape and size. He did this for several decades. At that time he had no data at his disposal either about the distances between the stars, or about their location in space, or about their sizes and luminosity. Without this data, Herschel assumed that all stars had the same luminosity and were distributed evenly in space, so that the distances between them were more or less the same, and the Sun was located near the center of the system. At the same time, Herschel did not know the phenomenon of light absorption in cosmic space and believed, moreover, that even the most distant stars of the Milky Way were accessible to his giant telescope. Using this telescope, he counted stars in different parts of the sky and tried to determine how far our star system extended in one direction or another.

But Herschel's initial assumptions were wrong. Now it is known that stars differ among themselves in luminosity and that they are distributed unevenly in the Galaxy. The Galaxy is so large that its boundaries were not accessible even to Herschel’s giant telescope, so he could not come to correct conclusions about the shape of the Galaxy and the position of the Sun in it, and he greatly underestimated its size.

William Herschel also dealt with other issues of astronomy. By the way, he unraveled the complex nature of solar radiation and concluded that it includes light, heat and chemical rays (radiation not perceived by the eye). In other words, Herschel anticipated the discovery of rays that go beyond the normal solar spectrum - infrared and ultraviolet.

Herschel began his scientific career as a modest amateur who had the opportunity to devote only his free time to astronomy. Teaching music remained his source of livelihood for a long time. Only in old age did he acquire the financial resources to pursue science.

The astronomer combined the features of a true scientist and a wonderful person. Herschel was a most skillful observer, an energetic researcher, and a deep and purposeful thinker. At the very zenith of his fame, he remained a charming, kind and simple person, which is characteristic of deep and noble natures.

William Herschel managed to convey his passion for astronomy to his family and friends. His sister Caroline helped him a lot in his scientific work. Having studied mathematics and astronomy under the guidance of her brother, Caroline independently processed his observations and prepared catalogs of Herschel’s nebulae and star clusters for publication. Devoting a lot of time to observations, Caroline discovered 8 new comets and 14 nebulae. She was the first female researcher to be accepted as an equal into the cohort of English and European astronomers, who elected her an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London and the Royal Irish Academy

William Herschel is an outstanding English astronomer of German origin.

Born in Hanover (Germany) on November 15, 1738 in the family of a musician. Having received a home education and becoming, like his father, a musician, he entered the military orchestra as an oboist and was sent to England as part of the regiment. Then he left military service and taught music for some time. Wrote 24 symphonies.

In 1789 he was elected a foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. He died on August 23, 1822. On his gravestone it is written: “Broken the bolts of heaven.”

Passion for astronomy

Gradually, while studying composition and musical theory, Herschel came to mathematics, from mathematics to optics, and from optics to astronomy. He was 35 years old at that time. Without the funds to buy a large telescope, in 1773 he began polishing mirrors himself and constructing telescopes and other optical instruments, both for his own observations and for sale. The English King George III, himself a lover of astronomy, promoted Herschel to the rank of Astronomer Royal and provided him with the funds to build a separate observatory. Since 1782, Herschel and his sister Caroline, who assisted him, constantly worked to improve telescopes and astronomical observations. Herschel managed to convey his passion for astronomy to his family and friends. His sister Caroline, as already mentioned, helped him a lot in scientific work.

Having studied mathematics and astronomy under the guidance of her brother, Caroline independently processed his observations and prepared catalogs of Herschel’s nebulae and star clusters for publication. Caroline discovered 8 new comets and 14 nebulae. She was the first female researcher to be accepted as an equal into the cohort of English and European astronomers, who elected her an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London and the Royal Irish Academy. His brother also helped him Alexander. Son John, born in 1792, already in childhood showed remarkable abilities. He became one of the most famous English astronomers and physicists of the 19th century. His popular book “Essays on Astronomy” was translated into Russian and played a major role in the dissemination of astronomical knowledge in Russia.

Thanks to some technical improvements and an increase in the diameter of the mirrors, Herschel in 1789 produced the largest telescope of his time (focal length 12 meters, mirror diameter 49½ inches (126 cm)). However, Herschel's main works relate to stellar astronomy.

Observations of double stars

Herschel observed double stars to determine parallaxes(changes in the apparent position of an object relative to a distant background depending on the position of the observer). As a result of this, he concluded about the existence of star systems. Previously, it was believed that double stars were only randomly located in the sky in such a way that they appeared nearby when observed. Herschel established that double and multiple stars exist as systems of stars physically connected to each other and revolving around a common center of gravity.

By 1802, Herschel had discovered more than 2 thousand new nebulae and hundreds of new visual double stars. He also observed nebulae and comets and compiled their descriptions and catalogs (prepared for publication by his sister, Caroline Herschel).

Star scoop method

To study the structure of the star system, Herschel developed a new method based on statistical counts of stars in different parts of the sky, called the “star scoop” method. Using this method, he established that all the observed stars constitute a huge oblate system - the Milky Way (or Galaxy). He studied the structure of the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that the Milky Way has the shape of a disk, and the Solar system is part of the Milky Way. Herschel considered the study of the structure of our Galaxy to be his main task. He proved that the Sun with all its planets is moving towards the constellation Hercules. While studying the spectrum of the Sun, Herschel discovered the infrared invisible part of it - this happened in 1800. The discovery was made during the following experiment: having split sunlight with a prism, Herschel placed a thermometer immediately behind the red band of the visible spectrum and showed that the temperature was increasing, and, therefore, by The thermometer is exposed to light radiation that is inaccessible to the human eye.

Discovery of the planet Uranus

Uranus- the seventh planet in terms of distance from the Sun, the third in diameter and fourth in mass. Herschel discovered it in 1781. Named after the Greek god of the sky Uranus, father of Kronos (in Roman mythology, Saturn) and grandfather of Zeus.

Uranus became the first planet discovered in modern times using a telescope. William Herschel announced the discovery of Uranus on March 13, 1781. Although Uranus is sometimes visible to the naked eye, earlier observers did not realize it was a planet due to its dimness and slow motion.

Herschel's astronomical discoveries

Planet Uranus On March 13, 1781, Herschel dedicated this discovery to King George III and named the discovered planet in his honor - “George's Star”, but the name did not come into use.
Saturn's moons Mimas and Enceladus in 1789
Moons of Uranus Titania and Oberon.
Introduced the term "asteroid".
Defined movement of the solar system towards the constellation Hercules.
Opened infrared radiation.
Installed that galaxies are collected in huge “layers”, among which he singled out the supercluster in the constellation Coma Berenices. He was the first to express the idea of cosmic evolution under the influence of gravity.

Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born on November 15, 1738 in Hanover in the family of oboist of the Hanoverian Guard Isaac Herschel and Anna Ilse Moritzen. Herschel's Protestants came from Moravia, which they probably left for religious reasons. The atmosphere of the parental home can be called intellectual. The “Biographical Note,” Wilhelm’s diary and letters, and the memoirs of his younger sister Caroline introduce us to Herschel’s home and world of interests and show the truly titanic work and passion that created an outstanding observer and researcher. He received an extensive but unsystematic education. Classes in mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy revealed his abilities in the exact sciences. But, besides this, Wilhelm had great musical abilities and at the age of fourteen he joined the regimental orchestra as a musician. In 1757, after four years of military service, he left for England, where his brother Jacob, the bandmaster of the Hanoverian regiment, had moved a little earlier.

In 1773, Herschel acquired a number of works on optics and astronomy. Smith's Complete System of Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy became his reference books. In the same year, he first looked at the sky through a small telescope with a focal length of about 75 cm, but observations with such a low magnification did not satisfy the researcher. Since there was no money to buy a higher-aperture telescope, he decided to make it himself. Having purchased the necessary tools and blanks, he independently cast and polished a mirror for his first telescope. Having overcome great difficulties, Herschel in the same 1773 produced a reflector with a focal length of more than 1.5 m. Herschel polished the mirrors by hand (he created a machine for this purpose only fifteen years later), often working for 10, 12 and even 16 hours in a row , since stopping the grinding process deteriorated the quality of the mirror. The work turned out to be not only hard, but also dangerous; one day, while making a blank for a mirror, the melting furnace exploded.

Sister Caroline and brother Alexander were William's faithful and patient assistants in this difficult work. Hard work and enthusiasm yielded excellent results. The mirrors, made by Herschel from an alloy of copper and tin, were of excellent quality and gave perfectly round images of stars.

As the famous American astronomer Charles Whitney writes, “from 1773 to 1782, the Herschels were busy transforming from professional musicians into professional astronomers.”

In 1775, Herschel began his first "survey of the sky." At this time, he still continued to earn his living from musical activities, but astronomical observations became his true passion. In between music lessons, he made mirrors for telescopes, gave concerts in the evenings, and spent his nights observing the stars. For this purpose, Herschel proposed an original new method of “star shards,” that is, counting the number of stars in certain areas of the sky.

On March 13, 1781, while observing, Herschel noticed something unusual: “Between 10 and 11 p.m., while I was studying the faint stars in the neighborhood of N Gemini, I noticed one that looked larger than the rest. Surprised by its unusual size, I compared it with N Gemini and a small star in the square between the constellations Auriga and Gemini, and found that it was significantly larger than either of them. I suspected it was a comet." The object had a pronounced disk and was moving along the ecliptic. After informing other astronomers about the discovery of the “comet,” Herschel continued to observe it. A few months later, two famous scientists - academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences A.I. Leksel and academician of the Paris Academy of Sciences P. Laplace, having calculated the orbit of the open celestial object, proved that Herschel discovered a planet that was located beyond Saturn. The planet, later named Uranus, was almost 3 billion km from the Sun and was more than 60 times the volume of the Earth. For the first time in the history of science, a new planet was discovered, since the previously known five planets had been observed in the sky for centuries. The discovery of Uranus expanded the boundaries of the solar system more than twice and brought fame to its discoverer.

Nine months after the discovery of Uranus, on December 7, 1781, Herschel was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London, and was awarded a doctorate from Oxford University and a gold medal from the Royal Society of London (in 1789, the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences elected him an honorary member).

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The discovery of Uranus shaped Herschel's career. King George III, himself a lover of astronomy and patron of the Hanoverians, appointed him "Astronomer Royal" in 1782 with an annual salary of £200. The king also provided him with funds to build a separate observatory at Slough, near Windsor. Here Herschel, with youthful fervor and extraordinary constancy, began astronomical observations. According to Arago's biographer, he left the observatory only to present to the royal society the results of his tireless labors.

Herschel continued to devote his main attention to improving telescopes. He discarded the second small mirror that had been used until then and thereby significantly increased the brightness of the image. Gradually Herschel increased the diameters of the mirrors. Its pinnacle was a telescope built in 1789, a giant for that time, with a tube 12 m long and a mirror with a diameter of 122 cm. This telescope remained unsurpassed until 1845, when the Irish astronomer W. Parsons built an even larger telescope - almost 18 meters long with a mirror diameter 183 cm.

Using the latest telescope, Herschel discovered two moons of Uranus and two moons of Saturn. Thus, the discovery of several celestial bodies in the solar system is associated with the name of Herschel. But this is not the main significance of his remarkable activity.

And before Herschel, several dozen double stars were known. But such stellar pairs were considered to be random encounters of their constituent stars, and it was not assumed that double stars were widespread in the Universe. Herschel carefully examined different parts of the sky over many years and discovered over 400 double stars. He studied the distances between the components (in angular measures), their color and apparent gloss. In some cases, stars previously considered double turned out to be triple and quadruple stars (multiple stars). Herschel came to the conclusion that double and multiple stars are systems of stars physically connected to each other and, as he was convinced, revolving around a common center of gravity, according to the law of universal gravitation. Herschel was the first astronomer in the history of science to systematically study double stars. Since ancient times, a bright nebula in the constellation Orion, as well as a nebula in the constellation Andromeda, visible to the naked eye, have been known. But only in the 18th century, as telescopes improved, many nebulae were discovered. Kant and Lambert believed that nebulae are entire star systems, other Milky Ways, but removed to colossal distances at which individual stars cannot be distinguished.

Herschel did a great job of discovering and studying new nebulae. He used the ever-increasing power of his telescopes to do this. Suffice it to say that the catalogs he compiled based on his observations, the first of which appeared in 1786, number about 2,500 nebulae. Herschel's task, however, was not simply to find nebulae, but to reveal their nature. Through his powerful telescopes, many nebulae were clearly divided into individual stars and thus turned out to be star clusters far from the solar system. In some cases, the nebula turned out to be a star surrounded by a nebulous ring. But other nebulae were not separated into stars even with the help of the most powerful - a 122-centimeter telescope.

At first, Herschel concluded that almost all nebulae are actually collections of stars and the most distant of them will also decompose into stars in the future - when observed with even more powerful telescopes. At the same time, he admitted that some of these nebulae are not star clusters within the Milky Way, but independent star systems. Further research forced Herschel to deepen and complement his views. The world of nebulae turned out to be more complex and diverse than previously thought.

Thus, Herschel came to the conclusion that nebulous matter, like stars, is widespread in the Universe. Naturally, the question arose about the role of this substance in the Universe, about whether it was the material from which stars arose. Back in 1755, I. Kant put forward a hypothesis about the formation of entire stellar systems from originally existing scattered matter. Herschel proposed the bold idea that different types of indecomposable nebulae represent different stages of star formation. By densifying the nebula, either a whole cluster of stars or one star is gradually formed from it, which at the beginning of its existence is still surrounded by a nebulous envelope. If Kant believed that all the stars of the Milky Way were once formed simultaneously, then Herschel was the first to suggest that stars have different ages and star formation continues continuously; it happens in our time.

This idea of Herschel was later forgotten, and the erroneous opinion about the simultaneous origin of all stars in the distant past long dominated science. Only in the second half of the twentieth century, based on the enormous successes of astronomy and especially the works of Soviet scientists, the difference in the ages of stars was established. Entire classes of stars have been studied that undoubtedly exist for a few millions of years, in contrast to other stars whose age is determined by billions of years. Herschel's views on the nature of nebulae are generally confirmed by modern science, which has established that gas and dust nebulae are widespread in our and other galaxies. The nature of these nebulae turned out to be even more complex than Herschel could have imagined.

At the same time, Herschel, even at the end of his life, was convinced that some nebulae were distant star systems that would eventually be decomposed into individual stars. And in this he, like Kant and Lambert, turned out to be right.

But Herschel considered his main task to be to clarify the structure of the Milky Way star system, or our Galaxy, its shape and size. He did this for several decades. At that time he had no data at his disposal either about the distances between the stars, or about their location in space, or about their sizes and luminosity. Without this data, Herschel assumed that all stars had the same luminosity and were distributed evenly in space, so that the distances between them were more or less the same, and the Sun was located near the center of the system. At the same time, Herschel did not know the phenomenon of light absorption in cosmic space and believed, moreover, that even the most distant stars of the Milky Way were accessible to his giant telescope. Using this telescope, he counted stars in different parts of the sky and tried to determine how far our star system extended in one direction or another.

But Herschel's initial assumptions were wrong. It is now known that stars differ from each other in luminosity and that they are unevenly distributed in the Galaxy. The galaxy is so large that its boundaries were not accessible even to the giant Herschel telescope. Therefore, he could not come to correct conclusions about the shape of the Galaxy and the position of the Sun in it, and he greatly underestimated its size.

Herschel also dealt with other issues of astronomy. By the way, he unraveled the complex nature of solar radiation and concluded that it includes light, heat and chemical rays (radiation not perceived by the eye). In other words, Herschel anticipated the discovery of rays that go beyond the normal solar spectrum - infrared and ultraviolet.

He combined the features of a true scientist and a wonderful person. Herschel was a most skillful observer, an energetic researcher, and a deep and purposeful thinker. At the very zenith of his fame, he remained a charming, kind and simple person, which is characteristic of deep and noble natures.

Herschel managed to convey his passion for astronomy to his family and friends. His sister Caroline, as already mentioned, helped him a lot in his scientific work. Having studied mathematics and astronomy under the guidance of her brother, Caroline independently processed his observations and prepared catalogs of Herschel’s nebulae and star clusters for publication. Devoting a lot of time to observations, Caroline discovered 8 new comets and 14 nebulae. She was the first female researcher to be accepted as an equal into the cohort of English and European astronomers, who elected her an honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of London and the Royal Irish Academy.

In 1788, Herschel married an Englishwoman, Mary Pitt. Their son John, born in Slough in 1792, showed remarkable abilities as a child. He became one of the most famous English astronomers and physicists of the 19th century. His popular book “Essays on Astronomy” was translated into Russian and played a major role in the dissemination of astronomical knowledge in Russia.

William Herschel (1738-1822) - founder of stellar astronomy, foreign honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1789). Using the telescopes he made, he carried out systematic surveys of the starry sky, studied star clusters, double stars, and nebulae. He built the first model of the Galaxy, established the movement of the Sun in space, discovered Uranus (1781), its 2 satellites (1787) and 2 satellites of Saturn (1789).

All human discoveries serve to provide a stronger proof of the truths found in the Holy Scriptures.

Herschel William

As the famous American astronomer Charles Whitney writes, “from 1773 to 1782, the Herschels were busy transforming from professional musicians into professional astronomers.”

A few months later, two famous scientists - academician of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences D.I. Leksel and academician of the Paris Academy of Sciences Pierre Simon Laplace, having calculated the orbit of the open celestial object, proved that Herschel discovered a planet that was located beyond Saturn. The planet, later named Uranus, was almost 3 billion km from the Sun and was more than 60 times the volume of the Earth. For the first time in the history of science, a new planet was discovered, since the previously known five planets had been observed in the sky for centuries. The discovery of Uranus expanded the boundaries of the solar system more than twice and brought fame to its discoverer.

In 1788, William Herschel married an Englishwoman, Mary Pitt. Their son John, born in Slough in 1792, showed remarkable abilities as a child. He became one of the most famous English astronomers and physicists of the 19th century. His popular book “Essays on Astronomy” was translated into Russian and played a major role in the dissemination of astronomical knowledge in Russia.

William Herschel - quotes

All human discoveries serve to provide a stronger proof of the truths found in the Holy Scriptures

Books open unknown worlds to a person.

All scientific discoveries were made, probably, for one purpose, namely: to confirm the divine revelation that is given to us in the Bible.

William Herschel(1738-1822) - English astronomer originally from the small German principality of Hanover.

His contemporaries-scientists nicknamed him “the king of the stars,” and indeed, Herschel’s most brilliant works are devoted to unraveling the nature of binaries and translational motion.

The astronomer reported his discovery to the Royal Astronomical Commission, and soon the observations of the most eminent astronomers of that time confirmed the fact of the discovery, which had not happened since ancient times.

When the head of the Astronomical Society asked Herschel to name the new planet, Herschel decided to dedicate his discovery to King George III of England and named the planet “George’s Star.”

However, this name did not take root, and in the end, after the death of the astronomer, the next planet in the solar system began to be called Uranus - after the ancient Roman deity of the starry sky.

King George III, who was himself a lover of astronomy and patron of people from Hanover, promoted William Herschel to the rank of Astronomer Royal and allocated him funds to build his own observatory in Windsor with the only condition: the king and the royal family should be able to look into his eyepieces at any time telescopes.