Happy birthday, Sir William Herschel!
Wednesday, November 16, 2011 - 11:00
in Astronomy & Space
On this day in 1738, an astronomy legend was born Sir William Herschel. Among this British astronomer and musicians many accomplishments, Herschel was credited with the discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781; detecting the motion of the Sun in the Milky Way in 1785; finding Castors binary companion in 1804 and he was the first to record infrared radiation. Herschel was well known as the discoverer of many clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. This came through his countless nights studying the sky and writing catalogs whose information we still use today. Lets take a brief, closer look at just who he was