William Herschel's Motivations

William Hershel’s motivation was “piqued by two developments. One was his systematic examination of the clusters and nebulae catalogued by the French comet hunter, Charles Messier, in 1782 and 1783” (source A).Herschel built upon the work of this French astronomer and developed better telescopes that clarified and answered research and questions posed by Messier. Clearly Herschel’s motivation was to expound, rectify, and discover answers about the universe and give them to the world. He was also influenced by the surprising results his sister Caroline was able to conjure by studying the sky with a telescope William built for her. He believed that “if Caroline could find new objects with her small telescope, a larger instrument, deliberately designed to search the skies, would reveal many more” (source A). I find his motivation to be really pure scientific interest in learning more about the natural world.

The questions Herschel had were first the ones posed by past astronomers and their work. He wanted to build upon

Uranus was originally thought to be a comet because of Herschel’s discovery. The true beauty of a scientific community shines through what happened next in history. Due to the research carried out by William Herschel other astronomers investigated this “comet” and many suggested it to be other things. A Russian astronomer named Anders Johann Lexell actually was the one who calculated an orbit for this comet which gave reason to many other astronomers to believe that this comet was in fact a planet which of course we know now holds true. Herschel became famous because of this discover and I think the greatest thing to come of his discovery is that he “was able to continue with his unique program of astronomical observation. For Herschel, the discovery of Uranus was not the high point of his career. It was instead a fortunate event that brought him enough wealth to study independently (source