Hector Macpherson

“ It was plainly obvious that the motion of the Sun could only be detected through the resulting apparent motion of the stars, just as the orbital motion of the Earth is reflected in the planetary motions. ”

“ By metaphysics we are enabled to prove the existence of a First Cause, the Infinite Author of all dependent beings. By mathematics we come to have a just idea of the superlative perfection of His works. By logic we can prove them to others. By ethics we are made sensible of our duty towards the Author of our existence and to our fellow-creatures."
This full-orbed conception of the world seems to have saved Herschel from falling under the influence of the spirit of scepticism then prevalent among men of science. ”

“ Scientific biographies are sometimes painful reading—painful because in them we are occasionally brought face to face with the flaws in great characters, the pettinesses of great minds. The biography of Herschel does not belong to that class. The character which shines through his writings, through his sister's memoirs, and through the correspondence and comments of contemporaries is that of a genial, kindly, earnest man. In private life he was a good husband and father, a loving brother and a devoted son. ”

“ Honorary degrees were conferred upon him and learned societies enrolled his name among their members. He accepted these recognitions of his genius, but put little stress upon them. Miss Burney, who along with her father visited him on numerous occasions, described Herschel as "perfectly unassuming, yet openly happy, and happy in the success of those studies which would render a mind less excellently formed presumptuous and arrogant. The King has not a happier subject than this man. . . . He seems a man without a wish that has its object in the terrestrial globe." ”

“ Herschel said, "appears to be nothing else than a very eminent, large and lucid planet, evidently the first, or in strictness of speaking, the only primary one of our systems; all others being truly secondary to it." This solid body, he believed to be protected from the great heat of the elastic fluid of its own atmosphere by dense planetary clouds; it was diversified by mountains and valleys, and was in every way analagous to the Earth and the other planets. "We need not hesitate to admit," he said in 1794, "that the Sun is richly stored with inhabitants." ”

“ The completion of the 40-foot was the climax of Herschel's career as a maker of telescopes. The fame of the great instrument spread over the world. Princes, dukes, and courtiers visited Slough in order to view one of the wonders of the age. Astronomers, too, came from all parts of the world—Lalande, Méchain, Legendre, Cassini from Paris, Oriani from Milan, Piazzi from Palermo, Sniadecki from Cracow. Slough became a place of pilgrimage, not only for astronomers, but also for large numbers who had only a slight interest in, or curiosity about, the science. ”

“ And how can we argue and draw conclusions if the superior intellectual powers are not improved by frequent exercise in speculative researches? Half a dozen experiments made with judgment by a person who reasons well are worth a thousand random observations of insignificant matters of fact. But setting aside the very obvious consequences of improved faculties, the subjects of mere speculative knowledge are of the highest concern to those who love wisdom. ”

“ If the Sun is moving in a certain direction, the stars in front will appear to disperse, while those behind will seem to draw closer together. But the problem is complicated by the individual motions of the "stars; and these motions—themselves very minute—have to be decomposed into two parts, the real motions of the stars themselves and the apparent motion resulting from the translation of the Solar System. ”

“ But it was not until the last two months of the same year that I felt the least encouragement to spend the star-light nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar-frost without a human being near enough to be within call. . . . All these troubles were removed when I knew my brother to be at no great distance making observations with his various instruments, on double stars, planets, etc., and I could have his assistance immediately when I found a nebula, or cluster of stars, of which I intended to give a catalogue ”

“ A great personality is a creative force; he gives more to his age and to posterity than he receives from his age or the ages before him.
The history of astronomical science has been dominated in a remarkable degree by great creative personalities pioneers of astronomical discovery. In the front rank of these distinguished men, posterity has placed the name of William Herschel. ”

“ As the principal belts on Jupiter are equatorial, and as we have certain constant winds upon our planet that regularly, for certain periods, blow the same way, it is easily supposed that they may form equatorial belts by gathering together the vapours which swim in our atmosphere and carrying them about in the same direction. ”

“ There is no doubt that George III, by his creation of this new post, made possible Herschel's long career of investigation and discovery: for no man, not even Herschel, could possibly have stood the strain of a life of professional activity and scientific investigation combined. As one of his biographers has well said, "The astronomer of Slough was the gift to science of the poor mad king". ”

“ These lessons included languages, logic, ethics, and metaphysics. In those early years Herschel's thirst for knowledge seems to have been insatiable. "Although," he wrote in after years, "I loved music to excess and made considerable progress in it, I yet determined with a sort of enthusiasm to devote every moment I could spare to the pursuit of knowledge, which I regarded as the sovereign good, and in which I resolved to place all my future views of happiness in life." ”

“ The importance of the discovery of binary stars may be realised when we recollect that previously there was no scientific proof of the prevalence of the law of gravitation outside of the Solar System. There were, of course, strong reasons for believing the law to be universal; and John Michell, a man of remarkable sagacity, had argued before Herschel began his observations, that many double stars were certainly binaries. ”

“ And despite the mothers dislike to learning and her lack of interest in intellectual things, all the members of the family—with the exception of the elder daughter, Sophia—inherited something of their father's ability. All four sons—Jacob, William, Alexander, and Dieterich—were eminent musicians; and the younger daughter, Caroline Lucretia, born 16th March, 1750, also accomplished in music, has earned a distinction only second to that of her distinguished brother, whose life-work she shared. ”

“ In this there occurs the following passage, which gives us some idea of the catholicity of his mind and also an insight into the secret of his success as a man of science: "It was said that speculation and metaphysics were of little use to mankind. This I deny. The perfection of our nature is evidently to be looked for in the superior powers of reason and speculation. What would all experiments avail if we should stop there and not argue upon them so as to draw general conclusions? ”

“ The paper of 1818 was the last which Herschel wrote on the construction of the heavens. He failed in the object of his search, but countless others have failed since his day, and at the present time astronomers are still groping after the solution of the great problem. Herschel did not labour in vain: his papers on the structure of the universe form the foundation of all subsequent research. ”

“ Of the planets, Mercury alone was neglected by Herschel; he studied it only when in transit across the solar disc. His observations on Venus—"an object," he said," that has long engaged my particular attention"—were commenced in April, 1777, and were continued for sixteen years. Herschel had four objects in view—to measure the rotation period of the planet, to ascertain the presence or absence of an atmosphere, to determine accurately the planet's diameter, and to give "attention to the construction of the planet with regard to permanent appearances". ”

“ One cannot reflect without amazement that the special life-task set himself by this struggling musician—originally a penniless deserter from the Hanoverian Guard—was nothing less than to search out the construction of the heavens. ”

“ Herschel's daring attempt to formulate a cosmology proved abortive. In place of this he was led to evolve a cosmogony. He appears to have been unaware of Kant's nebular hypothesis; indeed, he seems to have had, at the beginning of his career, no conception of evolutionary development among the celestial bodies. The dim, misty-looking nebulæ were all believed to be external galaxies, which increased telescopic power could resolve into their component stars. ”

“ In his paper of 1785 he admitted that "in all probability there may not be two or three of them in the heavens, whose mutual distance shall be equal to that of any other two given stars, but it should be considered that when we take all the stars collectively there will be a mean distance which may be assumed as the general one". Even in the paper of 1785 Herschel remarked that it would not be difficult to point to two or three hundred gathering clusters in our system. Indeed, his classification of so-called "nebulæ" was based on his view that condensation gave evidence of age. ”

“ Six satellites were manifestly visible, sharing in the planet's motion. On 17th September, he detected another satellite, still fainter, and closer to the ring, revolving in less than one terrestrial day. These moons were named Enceladus and Mimas. Two years later he announced that the fifth satellite Japetus performs its rotation, like the moons of Jupiter and our moon, in a period coincident with its revolution, These conclusions led him to an important generalisation, that "a certain uniform plan is carried on among the secondaries of our solar system ”

“ A suspicion that Uranus was encircled by a ring similar to Saturn was finally negatived by his investigations in 1792, which he described as "very decisive against the existence of a ring".
Herschel never discovered a comet. This branch of astronomy he left to his sister, who detected no fewer than eight during the course of her observing career. The first of these, discovered 1st August, 1786, was the subject of a short communication to the Royal Society. Other comets, too, seem to have been closely studied by him. ”

“ Towards the north and south I see no faculae; there is all over the Sun a great unevenness in the surface, which has the appearance of a mixture of small points of an unequal light; but they are evidently an unevenness or roughness of high and low parts." Very few details of the solar surface escaped his persistent scrutiny. His paper of 1801 described the process of spot-formation with a wonderful accuracy of detail. Curiously enough, Herschel—although he devoted attention to the prevalence or absence of spots—failed to notice the sun-spot period. ”

“ The discovery was soon communicated to the Observatories of Greenwich and Oxford. Maskelyne, the Astronomer-Royal, wrote to Dr. Watson on the 4th April that he had observed the strange object, "very different from any comet I ever read any description of or saw". On 23rd April he wrote to Herschel: "It is as likely to be a regular planet moving in an orbit nearly circular round the Sun as a comet moving in a very eccentric ellipsis"; and he immediately notified the French astronomers of the discovery. ”

“ On 2nd July Herschel noted in his diary: "I had the honour of showing the King and Queen and the Royal Family the planets Jupiter and Saturn, and other objects".
Herschel was now seriously considering the possibility of abandoning the profession of music and devoting himself to astronomy. There can be little doubt that after George III expressed interest in the discovery, Herschel indicated that he was anxious to be made "independent of music". The result of his interview with the King was his appointment as King's Astronomer. ”

“ Herschel believed the Moon to be both habitable and inhabited. Yet he laid it down in 1794 "that we perceive no large seas in the Moon, that its atmosphere (the existence of which has even been doubted by many) is extremely rare and unfit for the purposes of animal life; that its climates, its seasons, and the length of its days totally differ from ours; that without dense clouds (which the Moon has not) there can be no rain ”

“ I also bought an hautboy, and was never so happy as when I could occupy myself with music." At the age of twenty-one, having decided to follow out music as his life-work, he went to Berlin to study. Finding "the Prussian service as a bandsman very bad and slavish," he went to Potsdam and took lessons for a year. From Potsdam he made his way to Brunswick, and thence to Hanover, where in August, 1731, he was engaged as hautboy-player in the Foot-guards. Hanover was destined to be his home, and in 1732 he married Anna Ilse Moritzen, the daughter of a citizen of the neighbouring town of Wenstadt. ”

“ In this paper he gave a complete list of nebulæ which he had discovered and studied, "assorting them into as many classes as will be required to produce the most gradual affinity between the individuals contained in any one class with those contained in that which precedes and that which follows it". Those contained in one class and those in the next class in order, he declared, have not so much difference between them, in his own suggestive remark, "as there would be in an annual description of the human figure, were it given from the birth of a child till he comes to be a man in his prime". ”

“ By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Herschel's extraordinary activity began somewhat to abate. Not that his mind had become less acute, or his interest in astronomy less marked. But it was physically impossible for any man to maintain the standard of activity which had been his for thirty years. ”

“ The planet, he concluded, "has a considerable but moderate atmosphere, so that its inhabitants probably enjoy a situation in many respects similar to ours".
The planet Jupiter did not claim so much of Herschel's attention as either Mars or Saturn. Nevertheless, his short study of the giant world marked an epoch. In his paper of 1781 on the "Rotation of the Planets round their Axes," he put forward as a suggested explanation of the atmospheric condition of Jupiter what has been known as the "trade-wind" theory. ”

“ He concluded that he had been too hasty in his former surmise that all nebulæ were distant clusters. If the "shining fluid" can exist without stars, "we may with great facility explain that very extensive telescopic nebulosity" in the constellation Orion. "What a field of novelty is here opened to our conceptions!"
In 1802 Herschel dealt with the subject again in his "Catalogue of 500 new nebulæ". But it was not till 1811, in another epoch-making paper on the construction of the heavens, that Herschel enunciated his nebular hypothesis. ”

“ Yet despite this, and despite also the smallness of his salary, Herschel always expressed gratitude for the King's generosity. The personal relations between George III and his astronomer seem to have been consistently congenial; and one cannot help feeling that something more than expediency prompted Herschel in his choice of a name for the new planet which he had discovered. ”

“ At one time, no fewer than twenty-four men (twelve and twelve relieving each other) kept polishing day and night; my brother, of course, never leaving them all the while, taking his food without allowing himself time to sit down to table."
This ceaseless industry bore fruit when in August, 1789, the great telescope was ready for use. Herschel's former telescopes had been Newtonians, with small secondary mirrors. ”

“ From 1774 onwards, he carefully observed Saturn, and in April, 1777, he commenced to make sketches in pen and ink of the markings on the surface of Mars, and in the following year of those on Jupiter. His attention was not confined to the members of the Solar System, and in 1777 he commenced a series of observations on the variable star, Omicron—or Mira—Ceti. ”

“ Aubert, were intimate friends and correspondents of many years' standing. Among continental astronomers, Lalande, Bode, and Schröter, were the most frequent correspondents. With men of science his relations were as harmonious as with humble amateurs or anxious inquirers. No acrimonious controversies disturbed the even tenor of his scientific career. The nearest approach to heat was in his paper of 1793, when he made his spirited refutation of Schröter's alleged discovery of high mountains in Venus ”

“ It was not until the invention of the spectroscope that the theory was universally abandoned. Untenable though it was, it was the first serious attempt to co-ordinate the isolated facts ascertained concerning phenomena of the solar disc. ”