William Herschel's Double Stars

William Herschel was not an astronomer when he discovered Uranus. He was actually a musician and teacher. He looked at the stars as a hobby. However, he used a method different than most star gazers of the time. He mapped out the stars in relation to each other, instead of the traditional grid method used at the time (Smith 2013). He started out by studying the Society papers on natural history and matter theory, after he joined the Bath Philosophical Society in 1780. He also reached out to the experts of the time Joseph Priestley and John Mitchell on proper construction of astronomical telescopes. After he did his research, he started his survey of the stars, first looking for double stars. He used these double stars to help determine position and relation to other celestial bodies he located. He focused on light and space penetrating power. He was not as concerned with accurate positional measurements, as he was in the light and space between objects (Schaffer 1981). …show more content…
That’s when he noticed an object that moved in front of the star background over time, clearly demonstrating it was closer to us than the distant stars. At first he thought he had found a comet, but later realized this object was a new planet in orbit around our sun – the first discovered since ancient times” (Earthsky 2015). It turned out that astronomers had actually observed Uranus as far back as 1960, but had miscategorized it as a star. They did not look at Uranus in relation to other celestial bodies. His method of relating stars to one another is what led him to determine that this wasn’t a star, but a