William Herschel Facts
William Herschel Facts
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| Interesting William Herschel Facts: |
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| Frederick William Herschel was one of ten children born to Isaac and Anna Herschel. |
| He was born in Hanover, Germany |
| He was an oboist in the Military Band like his father. |
| Herschel also played the violin, harpsichord and organ. |
| He composed 24 symphonies and many concertos. |
| In 1757 Herschel immigrated to England during the war with France. |
| In 1766 he became the organist of the Octagon Chapel, Bath and was appointed Director of Public Concerts. |
| During his first concert on January 1, 1767 he played the organ, and performed his own violin concerto, an oboe concerto and a harpsichord sonata. |
| Herschel became interested in mathematics and optics. |
| After he met the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne, he began building his own telescopes. |
| On March 1, 1774 he started his catalogue of the skies by noting Saturn's Rings and the Great Orion Nebula. |
| He began searching for star pairs in order to demonstrate by means of parallax shifts their distance from the Earth. |
| In October 1779 he began a systematic search for binary stars. |
| He presented his catalogues to the Royal Society in 1782. |
| In 1802 he published the Catalogue of 500 new Nebulae, nebulous Stars, planetary Nebulae and Cluster of Stars; with remarks on the Construction of the Heavens. |
| His observations led him to theorize that double stars might be binary sidereal systems operating under mutual gravitation attraction. |
| He confirmed this hypothesis in 1803 in his Account of the Changes that have happened, during the last Twenty-Five Years, in the relative Situation of Double-Stars. |
| He confirmed over 800 binary star systems. |
| In March 1781 he noticed an object he originally thought was a comet or a star. |
| He decided it was a planet beyond Saturn. |
| In 1781 Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and awarded their Copley Medal. |
| In 1782 he was appointed "The King's Astronomer." |
| He became internationally famous as a telescope maker and sold over 60 of them to British and European astronomers. |
| He ultimately built more than 400 telescopes. |
| Herschel discovered over 2400 nebulae which he divided into 8 classes. |
| Herschel discovered two moons of Saturn and two moons of Uranus. |
| He was the first to state that the solar system is moving through space. |
| He studied the Milky Way and reported that it is shaped like a disk. |
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