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From: dipper@utastro.UUCP (Debbie Byrd)
Newsgroups: net.astro
Subject: StarDate:
Message-ID: <1095@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Mar-85 02:00:49 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.1095
Posted: Wed Mar 13 02:00:49 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 02:23:39 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 37

This is the anniversary of the discovery of the planet Uranus.  More --
after this.

March l3:  The Discovery of Uranus

On this date in the year 1781, the known size of the solar system
doubled.  With a homemade six-inch telescope, William Herschel
discovered the first new planet in recorded history --the planet
Uranus.  Uranus orbits the sun some 800 million miles farther away than
Saturn, which was then thought to mark the outermost limits of the
solar system.

In 1781, new planets were so unexpected that even Herschel didn't think
he'd found one.  Instead, he believed he'd discovered a comet.  When he
began to suspect that the greenish disk of Uranus was a planet after
all, he suggested that we name it the latin equivalent for George's
Star, for the current king of England.  The British Nautical Almanac
listed the planet as the Georgium until 1850. But everywhere else the
planet came to be called Uranus, for the mythological father of Saturn,
who in turn was the father of Jupiter.

Jupiter--Saturn--Uranus--these faraway worlds were blurry disks through
telescopes to astronomers only two hundred years ago.  We today have
seen the planets at close range--because we are the first to have
spaceships which travel through the solar system.  The Voyager
spacecraft have now swept past Jupiter and Saturn.  Voyager 1 is on its
way out of the solar system -- but Voyager 2 is due to encounter
mysterious Uranus less than a year from now -- to give us our first
close-up look at it in early 1986.  Uranus is four times larger than
the Earth -- we know it has thin rings -- and that it spins on its axis
sideways with respect to the other planets.


Script by Deborah Byrd.


(c) Copyright 1984, 1985 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin