The Discovery of Uranus

this episode brought to you by Magellan TV today is March 13th and March 13th is an interesting date in human history because it was on this date 239 years ago that humanity made an unprecedented discovery on this date in 1781 British astronomer William Herschel identified the planet that today we call Uranus the discovery of the first ice giant on our system the first discovery of a planet since antiquity transformed our understanding of the solar system but it also represented an era of scientific learning when men and women of broad scientific understanding who called themselves polymaths could transform our understanding of the universe from their backyard the discovery of the blue ice giants Uranus deserves to be remembered I'm sure you've heard me talk about Magellan TV there's a good chance that you're a subscriber but I want to talk to you about a new series that I've really been enjoying lately that's called space the new frontier the series there are 10 episodes in the first season gives amazing detail about where space exploration is today and where it's going it's all those breathtaking animations of our satellites and space explorer vehicles and it's filled with interviews with cutting-edge scientists this series of documentaries is a must-see for anyone who's interested in space exploration I'm a big fan of history documentaries but you might enjoy science space or nature all of which Magellan TV offers the Joe MTV has the richest and most varied history content available anywhere or ancient modern current early modern war biography but like we see today even non-historical genres like science and crime are historical in nature you can watch space the new frontier anytime anywhere on your television laptop mobile device Magellan is compatible with roku amazon firetv Apple TV Google Play and iOS so you can even cast it to your own TV and the best part is that Magellan TV is offering a free one-month trial subscription to all of my viewers all you have to do is set up with the links in the description I go to Magellan every day and it always gives me a new reason to think that this is truly worth the rate of subscription if you haven't signed up you really should again use the link in the description the path by which William Herschel became an astronomer began with an oboe Hershel was born in the electric of Hannover and a time when Hannover was both an electorate of the Holy Roman Empire and part of a personal union with Great Britain that is the King of Britain george ii was also the Prince elector of Hanover Herschel served in the military and the head of Aryan guards in their band after Hannover and its allies were defeated by the French at the Battle of Hostin back in 1757 Herschel escaped to England where he made a living as a composer and playing oboe violin and harpsichord being a gentleman of his era he was broadly interested in scientific study his profession naturally drew an interest in the mathematics of music and he read a book on the subject written by English mathematician Robert Smith called harmonics or the philosophy of musical sounds apparently he enjoyed Smith's work because it spurred him to read an earlier book by Smith a complete system of updates which described methods for telescope construction and so Herschel picked up yet another instrument the telescope the earliest known telescope was built by a Dutch eyeglass maker named hans lippershey in 1608 his simple refracting telescope was able to magnify an image up to three times refracting telescopes use lenses that focus the light as it travels to the other end of the telescope an objective lens is used to gather more light than the human eye is able to collect on its own focus it and present the viewer with a Breaker clearer and magnified virtual image Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei refined the desire to create a telescope that could magnify an object up to 30 times with his telescope Galileo is able to identify moons around Jupiter the Persis device which he called a looker used a convex lens in a concave eyepiece later German astronomer Johannes Kepler devised the different version that used both a convex objective lens and a convex eyepiece Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens built a capillary and telescope that could magnify an object up to 50 times using it to better describe the rings of Saturn and to discover that Saturn too had moons but refracting telescopes raise certain problems among them that larger magnification required larger lenses which became expensive and impractical invented by English astronomer Isaac Newton in 1688 a reflecting telescope uses one or more mirrored curved lenses that reflect the light to form an image the curved mirrors serve to magnify the light while both types of telescopes are still used reflecting telescopes are much more commonly used for astronomy since the mirrors can be made in smaller segments which are then put together to perform as one large mirror freeing you from the problem of having to make massive lenses this allowed Herschel who with study and practice learned to grind his own mirrors to build his own powerful telescope Uranus is an ice giant that is a giant planet composed mainly of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium distinguishing the planet from gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn which are made up mainly of hydrogen and helium the turn ice giant is dry because during their formation such planets incorporate the material is either ices or gas trapped in water ice with a radius of nearly 16,000 miles Uranus is about four times wider than the earth or as NASA explains it if the earth were about the size of a nickel Uranus would be about the size of a softball given the difference it seems odd that it was not until 1781 that an oboist discovered Uranus from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in Bath Somerset England to be fair Herschel was not the first to see the planet in fact it might have been first viewed by the 2nd century BC Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea but compared to the first six planets identified in antiquity Uranus is very faint the first six could be easily viewed with the naked eye the third planet from the Sun is particularly easy to see from your backyard it is possible to see Uranus without a telescope if you have a really good eyesight you can avoid light pollution and know where to look but it is very faint previous to Herschel the planet could be seen but not very clearly using a six point two inch aperture seven-foot focal length Newtonian telescope of his own manufacturer Herschel began searching for and cataloging stars Herschel particularly liked to look for binary star systems whose movement allowed the astronomer the ability to calculate the distance from the star to the earth looking for new discoveries he was particularly focused on stars whose brightness was slightly below that which could be observed with the naked eye but when viewing the object that would later be called Uranus he found something surprising when he changed the magnification on this telescope the diameter of the object increased in proportion with the power from his experience fixed stars did not do that in fact the object seemed to move relative to the fixed stars Herschel realized the significance of that observation the object he was seeing had to be closer than a star in fact it was much closer than a star while Uranus is nearly twenty times as far away from the Sun as the earth is the closest stars Alpha Centauri a and B are about two hundred and sixty-six thousand times as far away from the Sun as the earth is it was this ability to clearly observe the object allowed by Herschel's telescope that allowed the first discovery of a new planet since antiquity this object was the first planet to be identified by a telescope and it changed our understanding of our solar system but Herschel who made his discovery by accident didn't really know what he had discovered all the news that was inside the solar system at first he assumed that it must be a comment while the world of astronomy was taken by his discovery they were not convinced by his assumption that it was a comet as the British astronomer royal Nevil Maskelyne noted the object did not appear to have a tail as would be expected of a comet the object's orbit around the Sun was as likely to be nearly circular as it was to have the eccentric elliptical orbit of a comet after Herschel's discovery German astronomer Johann Albert bode realised that the object had been observed before but was always mistaken as a star using these previous observations Bodie was able to determine the object's orbit which observed to be nearly circular more like a planet than a comet Uranus is the only planet in the solar system whose equator is at nearly a right angle to its orbit while Uranus revolves on its axis and has a day of just 17 hours since the spin is at a right angle to the Sun the Sun does not rise and set based on that rotation rather the direction of the Sun striking the planet is controlled by Uranus is orbit being much farther from the Sun than the earth is that orbit or the time it takes for the planet to make a single trip around the Sun is law the equivalent of 84 earth years Uranus has not even gone around the Sun the Uranus year three times since it was discovered in 1781 because of its orientation each of Uranus is poles is directly facing the Sun for a quarter of that orbit that makes for particularly extreme seasons as summer at a pole means 21 years of direct sunlight while the other pole will have a 21 year long winter without seeing the Sun in an age of robust scientific inquiry it only took about two years for the scientific community to accept Herschel's discovery and about the same amount of time for the scientific community convinced Herschel that he had discovered a planet and not a comet and that left an interesting question what to call the first planet discovered since antiquity Maskelyne suggested that Herschel named the planet which is entirely your own and which we are so much obliged you for the discovery of Herschel suggestion was to name the planet after the king of England George the third by the grace of God king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland defender of the faith had granted Herschel a pension and recognition of his discovery and Herschel was happy to return the favor his suggestion was to name the new planet georgium sidess meaning george's star Herschel felt that the tradition of naming planets after ancient gods that have been developed in antiquity hardly made sense in the new philosophical era he argued that dating the planet after the king was appropriate because the planet was discovered in the time of George the third while George the third was certainly pleased with the idea the rest of the world was not despite Herschel being acknowledged as the planets Discoverer astronomers who were not from Great Britain found the idea of naming a planet after a particular King to be unacceptable while several other names were suggested including Neptune Johann bode suggested Uranus his reasoning had to do with how the previous planets had been named Jupiter represented the king of the gods in Roman mythology the Roman god Saturn was the father of Jupiter it only made sense but he argued to name the next planet after Uranus the father of Saturn Uranus was particularly fitting he said since he was the God of the star represented the heavens themselves that name is however unique Jupiter and Saturn are derived from Roman mythology which while heavily influenced by Greek mythology used different names Uranus is a Greek name and the planet is the only one in our solar system whose name is directly derived from Greek mythology the discussion of the name for the new planet dragged on for quite some time and in doing so affected another bit of scientific discovery in 1789 German chemist Martin clapper ahthe identified a previously undiscovered pitchblende lat breath who was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences with Bodie was both inspired by Bodie suggestion for the name of the new planet and wanted to support that suggestion and so named his newly discovered element after the god Uranus he named the element uranium it wasn't however until 1850 69 years after the planets discovery before the name Uranus became Universal on nautical star charts a note on pronunciation most astronomers prefer to use the pronunciation Uranus but that might be because so many of us in our adolescence found another pronounciation Uranus to be positively hysterical especially considering that it's talking about essentially a giant ball of gas but grammatically both pronunciations are acceptable but even before Uranus's name was accepted the planet raised the question another time after its discovery several scientists had calculated the planets orbit but by the early 19th century it became clear that something was off in the calculations in 1841 British astronomer John couch Adams offered an explanation proposing that the difference might be because of the gravitational tug of yet another planet in 1846 fridge astronomer urbane the very a mathematically calculated the mystery planet's orbit and location he sent his findings to German astronomer Johann Galle at the Berlin Observatory who searched for it using the observatories achromatic refractor telescope with an aperture of nine Paris inches one of the highest performing telescopes of the era the very ace calculations were so precise within one degree that galley found the planet within an hour like Uranus Neptune had previously been viewed including by Galileo and even being noted by William Herschel son John however astronomers had previously viewed Neptune which is too dim to be seen without a telescope had not correctly identified it as a planet that is gallais was the first to see Neptune and know what he was looking at galle originally suggested the name Janus for the newly discovered planet but the very a claimed the right and chose the name Neptune the Roman god of the sea and brother of Jupiter Herschel continued with astronomy and in 1790 with the aid of funds from King George both a 40-foot reflecting telescope at the time it was the largest scientific instrument ever built he used the 40-foot telescope to discover two new moons of Saturn Herschel sister also became an astronomer most notable for discovering several comets she's purported to be the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and was the first woman in England to hold a government position Herschel son John was also a polymath whose contributions to astronomy included identifying seven of Saturn's moons and four of Uranus's moons the planet his father discovered he is most well known however as the ax mentor of The Blueprint while no probe is yet been sent from Earth with the specific mission of exploring Uranus in 1986 NASA's Voyager 2 came within 50,000 miles of the planet's atmosphere Voyager discovered ten new moons two new rings in a magnetic field stronger than that of Saturn in the time since the discovery of the planet Uranus 27 moons have been discovered circling the ice giant which has a complex system of nine rings William Herschel's discovery of the planet Uranus well represents an era of scientific inquiry and discovery the first planet to be identified by a telescope really is a testament to a time when such magnificent devices were available to anybody who had an inquiring mind and the resources to build one science had never before seen something as extraordinary as an oboist redefining our understanding of the solar system from his own backyard [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 138,970

Rating: 4.9612846 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, space, william herschel, uranus

Id: aGVFwNWu5c0

Length: 15min 50sec (950 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 13 2020