Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Zoleikha Bagheri (Translator)

Abstract

On March 13, 1781, an amateur musician and astronomer, William Herschel, discovered the planet of Uranus at night. First, he didn’t understand what he had discovered and confused it with a comet. Herschel accidentally succeeded in discovering a dim and unusual star when he was exploring the sky with his 15 cm reflecting telescope. When he raised the magnification degree of his telescope, this unusual object appeared larger. When Herschel could believe observing this object in the sky, the stars that were in the vicinity of this object were still undefined points of light in the sky.
 He was able to gain more clues and information during other nights when this planet slowly passed through the stars.
 The luminosity of this body, which was part of the solar system, was less than a star, and most of its features indicated that it was a comet. Herschel presented his discovery to the Royal Institution of Great Britain under the title "Describing a Comet".