Charles Pritchard

“ In fact Herschel had become an astronomer from a sense of duty, and it was by filial loyalty to his father’s memory that he was now impelled to undertake the completion of the work nobly begun at Slough. William Herschel had searched the northern heavens; John Herschel determined to explore the southern, besides re-exploring northern skies. ”

“ Besides the laborious Cape Observations, Sir John Herschel was the author of several books, one of which at least, On the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830) , possesses an interest which no future advances of the subjects on which he wrote can obliterate. In 1849 came the Outlines of Astronomy, a volume still replete with charm and instruction. ”

“ These catalogues and charts being completed, he proceeded to discuss their significance. He confirmed his father’s hypothesis that these wonderful masses of glowing vapours are not irregularly scattered over the visible heavens, but are collected in a sort of canopy, whose vertex is at the pole of that vast stratum of stars in which our solar system finds itself buried, as Herschel supposed, at a depth not greater than that of the average distance from us of an eleventh magnitude star. ”