SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Sir William Herschel

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/sər wˈɪljəm hˈərʃəl/ Listen

Sir William Herschel

noun

English astronomer (born in Germany) who discovered infrared light and who catalogued the stars and discovered the planet Uranus (1738-1822). Synonyms: Herschel, Sir Frederick William Herschel, William Herschel.

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Etymology of 'Sir William Herschel'

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"Sir William Herschel" Quotes from Famous Books

... important contribution to the magnificence of the nights upon Saturn is the triple ring with which, as a brilliant setting, the planet is encompassed. To an observer at the equator, this ring, which has been estimated by Sir William Herschel as scarcely 100 miles in thickness, must have the appearance of a narrow band of light passing through the zenith 12,000 miles above his head. As the observer, however, increases his latitude either north or south, ...

— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... distance at which we examine minute objects, performs the part of a telescope, when an eye, placed behind it, sees distinctly the inverted image which it forms. A lens, twenty feet in focal length, will in this manner magnify twenty times; and it was by the same principle that Sir William Herschel discovered a new satellite of Saturn, by using only the mirror of his forty-feet telescope. The instrument presented to Prince Maurice, and which the Marquis Spinola found in the shop of John Lippershey, the spectacle maker of Middleburg, must have been an ...

— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

Words linked to "Sir William Herschel" : Herschel, uranologist, stargazer, William Herschel, astronomer, Sir Frederick William Herschel