The Discovery of Uranus by William Hershel William Hershel was a German born, living in England as a musician. One of his interests was astronomy, and he found himself searching the planets for life night after night and looking for double stars and fuzzy objects called nebulae. Since the telescopes available at the time were poor quality, he proceeded to construct his own, more powerful ones. In doing this he was able to observe farther distances with more accuracy. One night on March 13, 1781 he observed what he thought was a large nebula or a comet. Four days later he noticed it had moved and so he concluded it was a comet. He then wrote to astronomers in London telling them of his new ‘comet’. When they were finally able to view