Herschel had to watch each particular star in person, whereas the photographic lens will watch a thousand.
How close and persistent an observer a man must be who, watching one star at a time, discovers the one in a million that moves, is apparent. Chance, surely, must also come to his aid and rescue if he succeeds.
Herschel found his moving star, and at first mistook it for a comet. Later, he and Caroline were agreed that it was in very truth their long-looked-for planet. There are no proprietary rights in newly discovered worlds--the reward is in the honor of the discovery, just as the best recompense for a good deed lies in having done it.
The Royal Society was the recording station, as Kiel, Greenwich and Harvard are now. Herschel made haste to get his new world on record through his kind neighbor, Doctor Watson.
The Royal Society gave out the information, and soon various other telescopes corroborated the discovery made by the Bath musician. Herschel christened his new discovery "Georgium Sidus," in honor of the King; but the star belonged as much to Germany and France as to England, and astronomers abroad scouted the idea of peppering the heavens with the names of nobodies.
Several astronomers suggested the name "Herschel," if the discoverer would consent, but this he would not do. Doctor Bode then named the new star "Uranus," and Uranus it is, although perhaps with any other name 't would shine as bright.
Herschel was forty-three years old when he discovered Uranus. He was still a professional musician, and an amateur astronomer.
But it did not require much arguing on the part of Doctor Watson when he presented Herschel's name for membership in the Royal Society for that most respectable body of scholars to at once pass favorably on the nomination. As one member in seconding the motion put it, "Herschel honors us in accepting this membership, quite as much as we do him in granting it."
And so the next paper presented by Herschel to the Royal Society appears on the record signed "William Herschel, F.R.S."
Some time afterwards, it was to appear, "William Herschel, F.R.S., LL.D. (Edinburgh)"; and then "Sir William Herschel, F.R.S., LL.D., D.C.L. (Oxon)."
George the Third, in about the year Seventeen Hundred Eighty-two, had invited his distinguished Hanoverian countryman to become an attache of the Court with the title of "Astronomer to the King." The Astronomer-Royal, in charge of the Greenwich Observatory, was one Doctor Maskelyne, a man of much learning, a stickler for the fact, but with a mustard-seed imagination. Being asked his opinion of Herschel he assured the company thus: "Herschel is a great musician--a great musician!" Afterwards Maskelyne explained that the reason Herschel saw more than other astronomers was because he had made himself a better telescope.