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Herschel's Accomplishments

299 Words2 Pages
Herschel, an amateur astronomer, was not seeking to discover a new planet. Besides general curiosity, his motivations appear to be money, prestige, and power. He was looking for double stars as a way to measure stellar parallax. He had built his own 7ft reflector telescope which he moved to his house in Bath. There he discovered what would later be called Uranus. He thought it was a comet at first. Realizing he had problems with his calculations in regards of size and distance, his well-connected friends advised him to correspond with the appropriate astronomical society in England early on, which ended up being a blessing and a curse. He thought an established astronomer with a telescope at an observatory would be better equipped to
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