Herschel's Astronomy

In 1781, a man named William Herschel got his telescope and went out to look at the stars. He was trying to “isolate as many double stars as he could discover, and to use these doubles as a tool to measure stellar parallax.” (Uranus and the Establishment of Herschel’s Astronomy, Schaffer, S., 1981). While doing so, he found something that he knew wasn’t a star. At first, he thought it was a Comet. He reported his discovery to a few other scientists, and all together, they continued to discuss it. They decided that it was either a comet or a planet. A few questions about the size and position of the “comet” confused them. “Comets dominated the contemporary perception of the heavens: it seemed inconceivable that a new planet could be discovered.”