Planet Uranus. History and essence of scientific discovery

MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
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Planet Uranus. History and essence of scientific discovery

The most important scientific discoveries

Directory / The most important scientific discoveries

People's ideas about the solar system have undergone significant changes in the time that has passed since the discovery of the telescope until the end of the XNUMXth century. Only one thing remained unchanged: the number of planets in the solar system, equal to six. Saturn was considered the planet farthest from the Sun, and few people admitted that another planet was wandering in world space in a heliocentric orbit beyond the orbit of Saturn.

This planet was discovered by a German astronomer Wilhelm Herschel. In his long life, Herschel made many other remarkable discoveries relating to both the solar system and the stellar universe. For example, he proved that the Milky Way is an "immeasurable stellar layer", that is, it has a stellar nature. He owns unique observations of binary stars and fundamental studies of the shape and structure of the Galaxy. This scientist also owns the discovery of the periodic increase and decrease of white caps at the Martian poles and many other various phenomena occurring on the Sun, planets and satellites.

But among his numerous discoveries, undoubtedly, one of the first places is occupied by the discovery of Uranus, and it would be quite enough for Herschel's name to remain forever in the history of natural science.

Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (1738–1822) was born in Hannover to Isaac Herschel, oboist of the Hanoverian Guard, and Anna Ilse Moritzen. The Herschel Protestants were from Moravia, which they left, probably for religious reasons. The atmosphere of the parental home can be called intellectual. "Biographical Note", Wilhelm's diary and letters, memoirs of his younger sister Caroline introduce us to Herschel's house and world of interests and show the truly titanic work and dedication that created an outstanding observer and researcher. He received an extensive but unsystematic education. Classes in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy revealed his ability to exact sciences. But besides this, Wilhelm had great musical abilities and at the age of fourteen he became a musician in the regimental band. In 1757, after four years of military service, he left for England, where his brother Yakov, bandmaster of the Hanoverian regiment, had moved somewhat earlier.

Not having a penny in his pocket, Wilhelm, renamed William in England, took up copying notes in London. In 1766 he moved to Bath, where he soon achieved great fame as a performer, conductor and music teacher. But such a life could not fully satisfy him. Herschel's interest in natural science and philosophy, constant self-education led him to a passion for astronomy. “What a pity that music is not a hundred times more difficult than science, I love activity and I need something to do,” he wrote to his brother.

In 1772, William's younger sister Caroline Lucretia arrived in Bath. In 1773 Herschel acquired a number of works on optics and astronomy. Smith's Complete System of Optics and Ferguson's Astronomy became his reference books. In the same year, he first looked at the sky in a small telescope with a focal length of about 75 centimeters, but observations with such a low magnification did not satisfy the researcher. Since there were no funds to buy a faster telescope, he decided to make it himself. Having bought the necessary tools and blanks, he independently cast and polished a mirror for his first telescope. Having overcome great difficulties, Herschel in the same 1773 made a reflector with a focal length of more than 1,5 meters. Herschel polished mirrors by hand (he created a machine for this purpose only fifteen years later), often working for 10, 12 and even 16 hours in a row, since stopping the grinding process worsened the quality of the mirror. The work turned out to be not only difficult, but also dangerous, once a melting furnace exploded while making a blank for a mirror.

Sister Caroline and brother Alexander were William's faithful and patient helpers in this difficult work. Diligence and enthusiasm gave excellent results. The mirrors made by Herschel from an alloy of copper and tin were of excellent quality and gave perfectly round images of the stars.

As the famous American astronomer C. Whitney writes: "From 1773 to 1782, the Herschels were busy turning from professional musicians into professional astronomers."

In 1775 Herschel began his first "survey of the sky". At this time, he still continued to earn his living as a musician, but astronomical observations became his true passion. Between music lessons, he made mirrors for telescopes, gave concerts in the evenings, and spent his nights observing the stars. For this purpose, Herschel proposed an original new method of "star scoops", that is, counting the number of stars in certain areas of the sky.

On March 13, 1781, while observing, Herschel noticed something unusual: “Between 10 and 11 pm, when I was studying faint stars in the neighborhood of H Gemini, I noticed one that looked larger than the rest. Surprised by its unusual size, I compared her with H Gemini and a small star in the square between the constellations Auriga and Gemini, and found that it was much larger than either of them. I suspected that it was a comet." The object had a pronounced disk and moved along the ecliptic. Having informed other astronomers about the discovery of the "comet", Herschel continued to observe it.

Observations made on March 15 showed that the luminous circle does indeed have its own motion relative to the stars. From this fact, Herschel concluded that he had discovered a new comet, although neither the tail nor the foggy shell inherent in comets not very distant from the Sun was observed. Herschel reported this discovery to the Greenwich Observatory, and the circle of observers of the heavenly wanderer expanded significantly. By the summer of 1781, the number of observations became sufficient so that the parameters of the orbit could be calculated. These complex and cumbersome calculations were performed by the St. Petersburg academician Andrey Ivanovich Leksel (1740–1784), who found that Herschel's wandering asterisk moves around the Sun in an almost circular orbit at a distance 19 times greater than the distance between the Sun and the Earth. Leksel also determined the period of revolution around the Sun, which turned out to be approximately 84 years. From these calculations it clearly followed that William Herschel discovered not a comet, but a new, hitherto unknown planet, since even then it was known that the orbits of most comets are elongated ellipses with large eccentricities or even hyperbolas.

Herschel proposed to name the new planet the star George in honor of the English King George III, but this name did not become widespread. At the suggestion of the German astronomer Johann Bohle (1747-1826), she was given the name Uranus, taken from ancient Roman mythology and meaning the name of the most ancient of the gods. Uranus was almost 3 billion kilometers away from the Sun and more than 60 times the volume of the Earth.

This unique discovery occupies a special place in natural science in general and in astronomy in particular. Herschel's discovery invalidated the old, traditional views on the size and structure of the solar system and pushed its boundaries far beyond the orbit of Saturn. The solar system doubled in linear size, and now its boundary passed along the orbit of Uranus at a distance of 19,2 AU. e. from the Sun.

Subsequently, Herschel gradually increased the diameters of the mirrors. Its peak was the telescope built in 1789 - a giant for that time, with a pipe 12 meters long and a mirror 122 centimeters in diameter. This telescope remained unsurpassed until 1845, when the Irish astronomer W. Parsons built an even larger telescope - almost 18 meters long with a mirror 183 centimeters in diameter.

Using the latest telescope, Herschel discovered two moons of Uranus and two moons of Saturn. Thus, the discovery of several celestial bodies in the solar system is associated with the name of Herschel.

Author: Samin D.K.

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