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. 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
I researched about William Herschel, who was a conductor, organist, composer and music teacher. William Herschel knew the stars well and was always curious as to what was beyond the Earth. He had built himself a homemade telescope and enjoyed viewing the stars from it. As he was observing the stars one night he noticed an object that he could not clarify what it was. Other astronomers had seen this object, but never really observed how different it was.
She became interested in the sky and the stars at an early age. William Mitchell, an amateur astronomer himself, opened the doors and introduced Maria to the endless realms of astronomy available to explore. He taught her to use the sextant and the reflecting telescope, to enable her to discover and venture for information by watching the stars. It was Maria’s early start in the field of astronomy that prepared her for the biggest discovery of her life. She and her father would go up to the roof every night.
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 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.
While the goal of most astronomers was to chart the positions of planets and stars in the sky using mathematics, Herschel, however, was interested in the evolution of stars, and not their positions. When he discovered Uranus in 1781, he thought it was merely a comet. He contacted other astronomers about the new discovery. A month later astronomer Nevil Maskelyne suggested that
Out of the eight planets in our solar system, Uranus is the seventh farthest away from the sun and cannot be seen by the naked eye. It was actually the first planet to be discovered with the use of a telescope. The discovery of Uranus was made on March 13th, 1781 by William Herschel, a british astronomer and composer who was born in Germany. Uranus is described to be “rolling around on the sun on its side” because of the fact that is was tipped on its side with a tilt of ninety-eight degrees. Herschel originally thought that he discovered a comet but after a few years it was classified as a planet.
According to a peer-reviewed article, written by Kawaler, S. and Veverka, J. (1981) and published in Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 75, Hershel’s observations of sunspots have led him to believe that they [i.e., the sunspots] “were holes in the outer luminous layers of the sun, through which we glimpse a dark, cold solid interior” (p. 50). This observational premise has led him to determine that “the sun viewed in this light appears to be nothing else
It is the only planet to spin perpendicular to its solar orbital plane. William Herschel discovered Uranus in March of 1781. At first when he saw it he thought that it was just a comet. Anders Johan Lexell and Pierre-Simon de Laplace found out that it wasn’t a comet and that it was a planet! Laplace and Lexell were key in helping discover Uranus.
Nicolaus Copernicus established the concept of a heliocentric system that validates that the sun, rather than the earth, is at the center of our solar system. Later on, he is now known as the “Father of Modern Astronomy”. Early Life On February 19, 1473 in Torun, Poland, Barbara Watzenrode and Nicolaus Copernicus Sr. had their fourth child, Nicolaus Copernicus (Armitage,
The discovery of Mercury Mercury was first confirmed as discovered when Galileo Galilei turned his telescope on the planets and realized they matched predictions made by Copernicus. Unfortunately, his telescope wasn’t powerful enough to reveal a disk for Mercury, but it showed how
In October 1923 Hubble spotted what he first believed was a nova star flaring up in the M31 nebula. After examining several photos of the area, he realized that it was a Cepheid star. Using Shapley’s method, Hubble placed M31 a million light-years away. Discovering this, Hubble realized that there are more galaxies other than ours. This discovery is often referred to as the discovery of the universe and cosmos.
Discovering Pulsars Pulsars were first discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell on the 15th of July, 1943. She discovered pulsars when viewing the print outs of her experiment of
Johannes Kepley Earth Science Chanakan Rojanapenkul (Mimi) Niva International School Abstract Johannes Kepler was the first science who discovered the law of orbits, the law of planetary motion and the law of area. He is a german scientist who completely changed the way how people look at stars and planets. Germany are widely known for their achievement in Sciences and for their intelligences.
Reflecting Telescope - In 1668 Newton invented the reflecting telescope. This type of telescope uses mirrors to reflect light and form an image. Nearly all of the major telescopes used in astronomy today are reflecting
Abstract The purpose of carrying out this experiment was to investigate the phenomenon of Newtons’s Rings, to gain a better understanding of the theory Newton developed as well as to calculate the radius of curvature of a plano-convex lens and the thickness of a section of optical fibre. The effect is named after Isaac Newton who first studied it in 1717. The pattern observed appears as a series of concentric bright and dark fringes, which has its centre at the point of contact between two surfaces.