The law of gravitation had therefore enabled men to recognise in Halley's Comet an addition to the number of the primary bodies in the solar system--the first addition that had been made since prehistoric times. On March 13, 1781, Sir WILLIAM HERSCHEL { 38} detected a new object, which he at first supposed to be a comet, but afterwards recognised as a planet far beyond the orbit of Saturn. This planet, to which the name of Uranus was finally given, had a mean distance from the Sun nineteen times that of the Earth, and a diameter four times as great. This was a second addition to the solar system, but it was a discovery by sight, not by deduction.
The first day of the nineteenth century, January 1, 1801, was signalised by the discovery of a small planet by PIAZZI. The new object was lost for a time, but it was redetected on December 31 of the same year. This planet lay between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter--a region in which many hundreds of other small bodies have since been found. The first of these "+minor planets+" was called Ceres; the next three to be discovered are known as Pallas, Juno, and Vesta. Beside these four, two others are of special interest: one, Eros, which comes nearer the Sun than the orbit of Mars--indeed at some oppositions it approaches the Earth within 13,000,000 miles, and is therefore, next to the Moon, our nearest neighbour in space; the other, Achilles, moves at a distance from the Sun equal to that of Jupiter.
Ceres is much the largest of all the minor planets; indeed is larger than all the others put together. Yet the Earth exceeds Ceres 4000 times in volume, and 7000 times in mass, and the entire swarm of minor planets, all put together, would not equal in total volume one-fiftieth part of the Moon.
The search for these small bodies rendered it necessary that much fuller and more accurate maps of the stars should be made than had hitherto been attempted, and this had an important bearing on the next great event in the development of gravitational astronomy.