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Its aspect in Sir John Herschel's great reflector on the 23rd of September, 1832, was described by him as that of a "conspicuous nebula," nearly 3 minutes in diameter. No trace of a tail was discernible.
Herschel's inference of a partially obscured globe turning always the same face towards its primary seems the only admissible one, and is confirmed by Pickering's measurements of the varying intensity of its light.
He died at Collingwood in Kent, May 11, 1871, in the eightieth year of his age, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, close beside the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. The consideration of Sir John Herschel's Cape observations brings us to the close of the period we are just now engaged in studying.
Strange, indeed, that an amateur astronomer of Bath, a mere German music-master, should have hit upon a planet which escaped the sight even of the king's own Astronomer Royal at Greenwich. Of course there were not people wanting who ascribed this wonderful discovery of Herschel's to pure chance.
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.
Hence Herschel's observation produced a very different effect from, say, the discovery of the two moons which revolve round Mars, in our own day. Even people who felt no interest in astronomy were aroused to attention. Mr. Herschel's new planet became the talk of the town and the subject of much admiring discussion in the London newspapers.
She is one of the little girls whom I saw, twenty-three years since, playing on the lawn at Sir John Herschel's place, Collingwood. "... Miss Herschel was just perfect as a guest; she fitted in beautifully. The teachers gave a reception for her, gave her his poem, and Henry, the gardener, found out that the man in whose employ he lost a finger was her brother-in-law, in Leeds! "Jan. 9, 1884.
The colossal telescope which swings between the great walls, like Herschel's great telescope already mentioned, is a reflector, the original invention of which is due of course to Newton.
We have now to speak of Herschel's pioneering work in the skies. To explore with line and plummet the shining zone of the Milky Way, to delineate its form, measure its dimensions, and search out the intricacies of its construction, was the primary task of his life, which he never lost sight of, and to which all his other investigations were subordinate.
Pierre Prévost's similar investigation, communicated to the Berlin Academy of Sciences four months later, July 3, 1783, was inserted in the Memoirs of that body for 1781, and thus seems to claim a priority not its due. Georg Simon Klügel at Halle gave about the same time an analytical demonstration of Herschel's result. Am. A previous list of forty-five had appeared in Mém.
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