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Updated: June 5, 2025
Had I not seen it just when I did, I must inevitably have come upon it soon after, since my telescope was so perfect that I was able to distinguish it from a fixed star in the first minute of observation." Indeed, when once Herschel's twenty-foot telescope was made, he could not well have failed in the long run to discover Uranus, as his own description of his method clearly shows.
But under Herschel's treatment the nebular origin of stars first acquired the consistency of a formal theory. He meditated upon it long and earnestly, and in two elaborate treatises, published respectively in 1811 and 1814, he at length set forth the arguments in its favour. These rested entirely upon the "principle of continuity."
In Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two Herschel and his sister gave up their musical work and moved from Bath to quarters provided for them near Windsor Castle. Herschel's salary was then the modest sum of two hundred pounds a year. Caroline was honored with the title "Assistant to the King's Astronomer" with the stipend of fifty pounds a year.
Our limits compel us to draw our simple narrative to a close, and we must pass over the delight with which she received and read Sir John Herschel's great work, "Cape Observations," a noble monument of the perseverance and strenuous labour of genius; but of twofold interest to her, because it not only testified to the eminent qualities of her nephew, but brought to a noble conclusion the vast undertaking of that nephew's father and her own beloved brother the survey of the nebulous heavens.
If the scientific world, says Arago, saw with astonishment the unexampled rapidity with which Herschel's works succeeded one another for many years, they were greatly indebted for this affluence of production to the affectionate ardour of his sister Caroline. Her enthusiasm never failed; her industry knew no check; and her brother's fame was dearer to her than life.
Could they be rivers of lava once vomited from that centre by resistless volcanic agency and afterwards crystallized into glassy rock? This idea of Herschel's, Barbican had no hesitation in qualifying as exceedingly absurd. Rivers running in perfectly straight lines, across plains, and up as well as down mountains!
It was long before he reached twenty feet, indeed: his first effort was a seven-foot, attained only "after many continuous determined trials." The amateur pasteboard frame did not fully answer Herschel's expectations, so he was obliged to go in grudgingly for the expense of a tin tube.
Such a catalogue would be interesting only to astronomers; yet it would truly give the main facts of Herschel's existence in his happy home at Slough.
The new planet was found to rank in size next to Jupiter and Saturn, being 4.3 times the diameter of the earth. In 1787 Herschel discovered two satellites, both revolving in nearly the same plane, inclined 80 degrees to the ecliptic, and the motion of both was retrograde. In 1772, before Herschel's discovery, Bode had discovered a curious arbitrary law of planetary distances.
The full results of Herschel's journey to the Cape were not made public until 1847, when a splendid volume embodying them was brought out at the expense of the Duke of Northumberland. They form a sequel to his father's labours such as the investigations of one man have rarely received from those of another.
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