ipl-logo

Who Is William Hershal's Ambition Of Uranus?

379 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Galileo's essays

William Hershal was raised in a family of musicians. As he grew older he studied from a book entitled “Harmonics”, by Robert Smith. After reading it another one of Smith’s book caught his attention, “The Compleat System of Optiks”, an introduction to telescope construction.

Hershel wanted a telescope, but they were expensive. So, he set out to build his own. After multiple failed attempts and several successes, he finally completed construction of optics of “superb quality.” The telescope, which included the magnifying power of 6,450x, was found to be “far superior even to those used at the Greenwich Observatory.” In 1781, after completing several mappings of the night sky, Hershel (et al) observed an object that was not a star. It turned out to be the discovery of the planet Uranus. …show more content…

The discovery of Uranus led other scientists to an observation of how the planet’s orbit seemed to “wobbled”. In 1820 this question led Alexis Bouvard to successfully calculating the exact orbit of Uranus. And then, in 1845, an astronomer named Urbain Le Verrier discovered that the “wobble” of Uranus was caused by an orbital body whose gravity was causing a shift in the orbit of Uranus. He soon published a manuscript outlining the orbit of “a missing planet” in the solar system, and in 1846 publish the precise prediction of location of the planet in the night sky. Many of Verrier’s peers in France were too busy to confirm his conclusion, so Verrier wrote to a German astronomer named Johann Gottfried Galle. He and his assistant, Heinrich d'Arrest, searched for the planet predicted by Verrier and confirmed his finding on September 25,

Show More
Related
476 Words | 2 Pages

He built his first telescope when he was only 20, using mirrors, lenses, and parts of an old Buick car. He used instructions from a 1925 issue of Popular Astronomy. Through the telescope he made observations of Jupiter and Mars. He sent his drawn renditions of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, hoping to get feedback from professional astronomers. Instead, they offered him a job.

Read More
322 Words | 2 Pages

Leedskalnin say to have to have been self-taught to physics and was amazed by the pyramids, which pieces were moved by an irregular way. Leedskalnin was amazed by astronomy and loved stars, so he built a massive 30-ton telescope, which rockets 25 feet into the air, focused on the North Star. Then, after all his likings and life he built

Read More
188 Words | 1 Pages

William Herschel was the first to notice this odd object and was curious to find out more. This odd object, Uranus, was the first planet in recorded history to be discovered. The discovery of Uranus was just the beginning of William Herschel’s discoveries. He left his work with music and became

Read More
302 Words | 2 Pages

William Herschel Discovered Uranus William Herschel was born in 1738 and was known as a musician; he taught, composed, and performed music. However, he became interested in astronomy and began viewing the stars through a telescope that he had borrowed. Later, he began designing his own telescopes which enabled him to view objects at a greater distance. Instead of randomly studying the sky at night, he worked methodically across the entire sky and carefully wrote down his observations.

Read More
299 Words | 2 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.

Read More
578 Words | 3 Pages

His motivation was for people to use his telescope and his work was looking for double stars, and in proving that it worked Herschel found what looked to be a slow moving comet that was later called Uranus on March 13, 1781. He wrote “’Looking at a star in the quartile between Aurigas right foot and the left foot of Castor I discover’d a Comet. It was at the distance of almost 2/3 of my field of view from a small telescope star which followed it and seemed to have the same declination.”’ He then looked again 4 days later and to himself that confirmed it was a

Read More
628 Words | 3 Pages

These astronomers were focusing on finding evidence of planets around small dwarf stars, they observed the changing

Read More
286 Words | 2 Pages

“Herschel's grand project and the ultimate object of his observations was the "Construction of the Heavens." Herschel sought to understand the arrangement of… the Milky Way, as well as… other star systems. ”2 This is how he found Uranus. The short story is that Herschel was looking in the constellation Gemini and found what he thought was a star.

Read More
354 Words | 2 Pages

Astronomy: Discovery of Uranus by William Hershcel in 1781 William Hershal was raised in a family of musicians. As he grew older he studied from a book entitled “Harmonics”, by Robert Smith. After reading it another one of Smith’s book caught his attention, “The Compleat System of Optiks”, an introduction to telescope construction. Hershel wanted a telescope, but they were expensive.

Read More
206 Words | 1 Pages

I thought it was really interesting is that he wasn’t even looking for the planet when he discovered it. He was looking for something called a double star, and he was trying to document all the double stars he could. It is interesting that most of the major discoveries

Read More
252 Words | 2 Pages

He recorded double stars and fuzzy objects in the distance. He also looked for other life that exists out in space. That so called “comet” turned out to be a planet, “the first planet discovered since the beginning of recorded history!” (Ruskin) Herschel’s discovery was led by his hobby. He originally was a musician, but after he discovered the planet he was then paid to be an astronomer, and he gave up his musical career.

Read More
219 Words | 1 Pages

As he was doing this he found the planet Uranus. But William Herschel says it was not by chance at all. “He saw it as an inevitable consequence of a series of thorough

Read More
160 Words | 1 Pages

This is significant to us in this day because we now know of Uranus! It is also significant to see how William Herschel got to where he did, not just by himself but with the hard work of

Read More
747 Words | 3 Pages

Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun in the solar system. It has the third largest mass in the solar system. It was William Herschel who discovered Uranus in 1781. In two years William thought it was a star or a comet. But then Uranus was accepted as a planet because of Johann Elert Bode’s observations.

Read More
450 Words | 2 Pages

The planet Uranus was discovered on March 13th, 1781 by German born British-astronomer William Herschel. Herschel found the new planet by using a telescope that he made himself. When he discovered the planet, he didn’t really know what he was looking at. He thought he might have discovered a nebular star or even a new comet. Later on he presented his findings to the Royal Society, where Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne revealed that it actually had a planet like orbit, and did not seem to possess a tail like a comet would.

Read More

More about Who Is William Hershal's Ambition Of Uranus?

Related Topics

Open Document