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Updated: May 22, 2025
"Yes," he answered, in the rather croaky voice I had learned to know, "the ground will be nice for them to get out and in! It must be a grand time on the steppes of Uranus!" he added, with a glance upward; "I believe it is raining there too; it was, all the last week!" "Why should that make it a grand time?" I asked.
At the close of the eighteenth century, mankind were acquainted with all the major planets except Neptune. Uranus, the last of the group, was discovered by the Elder Herschel, on the night of the thirteenth of March, 1781. True, this planet had been seen on twenty different occasions, by other observers; but its character had not been revealed.
Nay, the possibility was made apparent that the limits of our system were not even thus reached, but that yet profounder abysses of space might shelter obedient, though little favoured, members of the solar family, by future astronomers to be recognised through the sympathetic thrillings of Neptune, even as Neptune himself was recognised through the tell-tale deviations of Uranus.
The genius of a Laplace or a Lagrange was expended, and worthily expended, in efforts to show how one planet acted on another planet, and produced irregularities in its orbit; the genius of an Adams and a Leverrier was nobly applied to explain the irregularities in the motion of Uranus, and to discover a cause of those irregularities in the unseen Neptune.
We find an explanation of the physical condition of the sun, and the transitions of condition through which the earth and moon have passed, as indicated by their geology. But two exceptions to the above peculiarities have been noted; they are in the cases of Uranus and Neptune. The existence of such a nebulous mass once admitted, all the rest follows as a matter of necessity.
Among the papers found after his death was the following memorandum, dated July the 3rd, 1841: "Formed a design at the beginning of this week of investigating, as soon as possible after taking my degree, the irregularities in the motion of Uranus, Which are as yet unaccounted for, in order to find whether they may be attributed to the action of an undiscovered planet beyond it; and, if possible, thence to determine the elements of its orbit approximately, which would lead probably to its discovery."
He was as careful and patient as he was rapid; spared no time and omitted no precaution to secure accuracy in his observations; yet in one night he would examine, singly and attentively, up to 400 separate objects. The discovery of Uranus was a mere incident of the scheme he had marked out for himself a fruit, gathered as it were by the way.
What marks Herschel's achievement as one of the great epochs in the history of astronomy is the fact that the detection of Uranus was the very first recorded occasion of the discovery of any planet whatever. For uncounted ages those who watched the skies had been aware of the existence of the five old planets Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Venus, and Mars.
Why strain laboriously to settle names, and dates, and dynasties? What mere point they have occupied in the processes of the great universe! Their hieroglyphic pillars, their gray old pyramids; what are they to the age of Uranus, or the new planet?
Uranus, revolving 1,753,851,000 miles from the center of the planetary system, is of an age amounting to many hundred millions of centuries. Jupiter, the colossal planet, gravitating at a distance of 475,693,000 miles, may be reckoned as 70,000,000 centuries old. Mars has existed for 1,000,000,000 years at a distance of 139,212,000 miles.
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