Many people saw Uranus but viewed it as a star. When William Herschel, who many viewed as an amateur astronomer, first saw it he thought it was a comet. Through further observation he realized that its motion was not that of a comet.

They continued watching it, Herschel and many others, and in November of 1781, they realized that it was orbiting the Sun. In their words, it was “mov[ing] in a relatively circular orbit, not the parabolic or elliptical orbits characteristics of comets.”

Before Herschel’s discovery the solar system only consisted of five planets. This was a first in 225 years. Uranus is “1.78 billion miles from the Sun, tracing a path about 19 times farther from the Sun than Earth follows.” With this discovery astronomers