The Uranus Discovery And Why It's Such An Oddity!
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From its origins, to its tilt, to the effects of its atmosphere and more, join me as we explore the Uranus discovery and why it's such an oddity.
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While it's true that technology nowadays allows us to view planets and stars with incredible clarity, you might be surprised by how far back many of our planets were discovered. For Uranus, it was officially discovered all the way back in 1781 by Sir William Herschel. And if you're curious, the reason he was knighted (which is why he's called "Sir") is because of the fact that he discovered the planet.
The catch though was that the sighting of the planet was not believed to be a planet by Herschel. Instead, he thought it was a comet, and thus ignored for the grand part of the next bit of time. However, despite this belief that it was a comet, he recorded it in a great many places, including telling about his discovery to the Royal Society:
"The power I had on when I first saw the comet was 227. From experience I know that the diameters of the fixed stars are not proportionally magnified with higher powers, as planets are; therefore I now put the powers at 460 and 932, and found that the diameter of the comet increased in proportion to the power, as it ought to be, on the supposition of its not being a fixed star, while the diameters of the stars to which I compared it were not increased in the same ratio. Moreover, the comet being magnified much beyond what its light would admit of, appeared hazy and ill-defined with these great powers, while the stars preserved that lustre and distinctness which from many thousand observations I knew they would retain. The sequel has shown that my surmises were well-founded, this proving to be the Comet we have lately observed."
His wonder about the object continued to plague him. Herschel notified the Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne of his discovery and received this flummoxed reply from him on 23 April 1781: "I don't know what to call it. It is as likely to be a regular planet moving in an orbit nearly circular to the sun as a Comet moving in a very eccentric ellipsis. I have not yet seen any coma or tail to it."
It wasn't until years later that others saw Uranus and confirmed it was indeed a planet. To which Herschel was MORE than happy to accept credit for his find. And get this, he was paid 200 Euros as a stipend for the discovery, but the man who gave it to him, King George III, asked that he move to Windsor so that the Royal Family could observe the planet that he had found.
Now, here's another twist in this tale, when the planet was confirmed to be real, Herschel wanted to name it Georgian Sidus. Which is a reference to King George III. He even went into GREAT detail about why it should be named as thus:
"In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method and call it Juno, Pallas, Apollo or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, 'In the reign of King George the Third'."
Sounds reasonable on paper, but...the problem with naming it after a ruler versus a God/Deity is that most people have certain feelings about rulers and rarely about deities outside their own pantheon. Thus, while people in Britain were okay with naming the planet after their king...the rest of the world wasn't. So instead, the planet was named Uranus via Johann Bode. Who named it after the Greek God Ouranos.
He believed that if we named the planet something other than a deity it would feel "out of place", and it fit the order of Mars to Jupiter, Mars was the son of Jupiter, and Jupiter was the son of Saturn, and Saturn would be the son of Uranus. Thus adding a nice bit of storytelling and balance to things. It took a while for the name to stick, but in 1850 the HM Nautical Almanac Office was the last official place to go from Georgium Sidus to Uranus.
And if you're curious, yes, the same man who named Uranus also got Uranium named after his idea. Oh the wonders of the world and how they work.
You almost have to wonder what would've happened differently history wise if Herschel realized that it was a planet and not a comet in 1781. Would the name have stuck? Would the jokes not have happened?
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