Further popularity accrued to the science from the sequel of a career so strikingly opened. Herschel's huge telescopes, his detection by their means of two Saturnian and as many Uranian moons, his piercing scrutiny of the sun, picturesque theory of its constitution, and sagacious indication of the route pursued by it through space; his discovery of stellar revolving systems, his bold soundings of the universe, his grandiose ideas, and the elevated yet simple language in which they were conveyed--formed a combination powerfully effective to those least susceptible of new impressions. Nor was the evoked enthusiasm limited to the British Isles. In Germany, Schröter followed--_longo intervallo_--in Herschel's track. Von Zach set on foot from Gotha that general communication of ideas which gives life to a forward movement. Bode wrote much and well for unlearned readers. Lalande, by his popular lectures and treatises, helped to form an audience which Laplace himself did not disdain to address in the _Exposition du Système du Monde_.
This great accession of public interest gave the impulse to the extraordinarily rapid progress of astronomy in the nineteenth century. Official patronage combined with individual zeal sufficed for the elder branches of the science. A few well-endowed institutions could accumulate the materials needed by a few isolated thinkers for the construction of theories of wonderful beauty and elaboration, yet precluded, by their abstract nature, from winning general applause. But the new physical astronomy depends for its prosperity upon the favour of the multitude whom its striking results are well fitted to attract. It is, in a special manner, the science of amateurs. It welcomes the most unpretending co-operation. There is no one "with a true eye and a faithful hand" but can do good work in watching the heavens. And not unfrequently, prizes of discovery which the most perfect appliances failed to grasp, have fallen to the share of ignorant or ill-provided assiduity.
Observers, accordingly, have multiplied; observatories have been founded in all parts of the world; associations have been constituted for mutual help and counsel. A formal astronomical congress met in 1789 at Gotha--then, under Duke Ernest II. and Von Zach, the focus of German astronomy--and instituted a combined search for the planet suspected to revolve undiscovered between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Astronomical Society of London was established in 1820, and the similar German institution in 1863. Both have been highly influential in promoting the interests, local and general, of the science they are devoted to forward; while functions corresponding to theirs have been discharged elsewhere by older or less specially constituted bodies, and new ones of a more popular character are springing up on all sides.