Caroline Herschel

miss caroline lucretia herschel this very interesting lady died at hanover on the ninth of january eighteen forty eight in the ninety eighth year of her age she was the sister of sir william herschel and consequently aunt to sir john herschel the present representative of this truly scientific family miss herschel was the constant companion of her brother and sole assistant of his astronomical labours to the success of which her indefatigable zeal diligence and singular accuracy of calculation not a little contributed from the first commencement of his astronomical pursuits her attendance on both his daily labours and nightly watches was put in requisition and was found so useful that on herschel's removal from bath to datchet and subsequently to slough he being then occupied with the review of the heavens and other researches she performed the whole of the arduous duties of his astronomical assistant not only reading the clocks and noting down all the observations from dictation as an amanuensis but subsequently executing the extensive and laborious numerical calculations necessary to render them available to science for the performance of these duties his majesty king george the third was pleased to place her in the receipt of a salary sufficient for her singularly moderate wants and retired habits arduous however as these occupations must appear especially when it is considered that her brother's observations were always carried on circumstances permitting till daybreak without regard to season and indeed chiefly in winter they proved insufficient to exhaust her activity in the intervals she found time both for astronomical observations of her own and for the execution of more than one work of great extent and utility the observations she made with a small newtonian sweeper constructed for her by her brother with which she found no less than eight comets and on five of these occasions her claim to the first discovery is admitted these sweeps also proved productive of the detection of several remarkable nebul and clusters of stars previously unobserved on her brother's death in eighteen twenty two miss herschel returned to hanover which she never again quitted passing the last twenty-six years of her life in repose enjoying the society and cherished by the regard of her remaining relatives and friends gratified by the occasional visits of eminent astronomers and honoured with many marks of favour and distinction on the part of the king of hanover the crown prince and his amiable and illustrious consort to within a very short period of her death her health continued uninterrupted her faculties perfect and her memory especially of the scenes and circumstances of former days remarkably clear and distinct her end was tranquil and free from suffering a simple cessation of life We append the following just and eloquent tribute to the merits of Miss Herschel from Dr. Nicholl's Views of the Architecture of the Heavens.

quote the astronomer sir william herschel during these engrossing nights was constantly assisted in his labours by a devoted maiden sister who braved with him the inclemency of the weather who heroically shared his privations that she might participate in his delights whose pen we are told committed to paper his notes of observation as they issued from his lips she it was says the best authorities who having passed the nights near the telescope took the rough manuscripts to her cottage at the dawn of day and produced a fair copy of the night's work on the ensuing morning she it was who planned the labour of each succeeding night who reduced every observation made every calculation and kept everything in systematic order she it was miss caroline herschel who helped our astronomer to gather an imperishable name this venerable lady has in one respect been more fortunate than her brother she has lived to reap the full harvest of their joint glory some years ago the gold medal of our astronomical society was transmitted to her at her native hanover whither she removed after sir william's death and the same learned society has recently inscribed her name upon its roll but she has been rewarded by yet more by what she will value beyond all earthly pleasures she has lived to see her favourite nephew him who grew up under her eye unto an astronomer gather around him the highest hopes of scientific europe and prove himself fully equal to tread in the footsteps of his father tycho brahe's credulity the great astronomer strongly and weakly believed in the predictions of astrology if when he went abroad he met an old woman or a hare crossed his path he would turn back being persuaded that evil was threatened him invention of the telescope and early discoveries with it it is singular that the epoch of the most extensive discoveries upon the surface of our planet was immediately succeeded by man's first taking possession of a considerable part of the celestial spaces by the telescope the powers of this instrument have not yet reached their limit the feeble commencement however hardly magnifying as much as thirty-two times in linear dimension enabled astronomers to penetrate into cosmical depths before unknown the accidental discovery of the space penetrating power of the telescope was first made in holland probably as early as the close of sixteen o eight according to the latest documentary investigation this great invention may be claimed by hans a native of wesel and a spectacle-maker at middelburg who on the second of october sixteen o eight offered to the states general certain instruments with which one can see to a distance two other persons adriens and jensen made a similar offer nearly at the same time when the news of the dutch invention reached venice galileo was accidentally present he at once divined what were the essential conditions of the construction and immediately completed a telescope at padua for his own use he directed it first to the mountains in the moon then examined with small magnifying powers the group of the pleiades the cluster of stars in cancer the milky way and the group of stars in the head of orion then followed in quick succession the great discovery of the four satellites of jupiter the two handles of saturn or his surrounding ring imperfectly seen so that its true character was not at once recognized the solar spots and the crescent form of venus the occultations of the satellites or their entrance into the shadow of jupiter led to the knowledge of the velocity of light and led galileo to perceive their importance in the determination of the longitude of places on land galileo carried his first telescope to venice where his time for more than a month was employed in showing and explaining its nature to the different inhabitants a ludicrous instance is related of the insatiable telescope mania which had seized on the people galileo went one day to the tower of st mark in order to make observations on its summit but the people espied him and compelled him to hand a telescope which he had made for himself from one to another until all had gratified their curiosity by having a peep and after he had been detained several hours he was not a little glad to regain his telescope and return home but this was not all he heard them inquiring at what inn he lodged and foreseeing the inconvenience of the celebrity which was beginning to attach to him he left venice early the next morning to pursue his observations with greater privacy melancholy is it to relate that these brilliant disclosures brought temporary disgrace and positive suffering upon their author galileo at the age of seventy-seven after having devoted his life to useful and valuable labours was forced to abjure his philosophical opinions and to declare on his knees that he believed his doctrines concerning the motion of the earth round the sun the existence of solar spots and so forth to be false and pernicious the moral firmness of the old man was not sufficient to make him brave the terrors of the inquisition and we must therefore look with a lenient eye at this abjuration of doctrines which at the very moment he firmly believed to be true but what shall we say of those men who under the plea of religion could subject so noble a mind to such humiliating degradation Identity of black and green tea Green and black tea are produced from the same plant, though the botanists were long at issue about this matter.

The idea of green tea being dried upon copper is proved to be a popular fallacy, for the tea would be flavored and spoiled in the process.

Besides, the bloom can be given by harmless means.

One of the highlights is NGC 7789.

It was discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel, the first woman to be paid for her work as an astronomer.

Through a telescope, the contours of the cluster and nearby clouds of dust resemble a rose, so NGC 7789 also is known as Caroline's Rose.

The cluster is about 6,800 light-years away in the opposite direction from the center of the galaxy, and it's packed with stars.

It has 1,300 confirmed members with an estimated total of 3,000 stars or more.

By the time many other clusters have made that many orbits, they've been pulled apart by the gravity of the rest of the galaxy.

The stars survive, but they head their separate ways.

Caroline's Rose is in the northeast at nightfall, just above Cassiopeia's outline.

Martians, Mars, all of a sudden, I was surprised to see it comes out of the Herschels.

William and Caroline Herschel, they're tracking nebulae, which we now understand to be galaxies.

They didn't understand that at the time.

That won't be to the 20th century.

Learn more at jameshardy.com slash alliance.

An Account of a New Comet by Carolyn Herschel an account of a new comet in a letter from miss caroline herschel to charles blackton from the philosophical transactions of the royal society of london seventeen eighty seven volume seventy seven sir in consequence of the friendship which i know to exist between you and my brother i venture to trouble you in his absence with the following imperfect account of a comet the employment of writing down the observations when my brother uses the twenty feet reflector does not often allow me time to look at the heavens but as he is now on a visit to germany i have taken the opportunity of his absence to sweep in the neighbourhood of the sun in search of comets and last night the first of august about ten o'clock i found an object very much resembling in colour and brightness the twenty-seventh nebula of the connaissance de temps with the difference however of being round i suspected it to be a comet but a haziness coming on it was not possible entirely to satisfy myself as to its motion till this evening i made several drawings of the stars in the field of view with it and have enclosed a copy of them with my observations annexed that you may compare them together August 1st, 1786, 9 hours 50 minutes.

The object in the center is like a star out of focus, while the rest are perfectly distinct, and I suspect it to be a comet.

Table 1, Figure 1.