William Herschel
The astronomer who discovered Uranus and in 1802 coined the word asteroid for the small bodies found between Mars and Jupiter.
Key facts
- Born
- 1738
- Died
- 1822
- Nationality
- German-born British
- Field
- Astronomer
Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born in Hanover, moved to England as a young musician and became a celebrated organist and composer in Bath. His hobby was astronomy, and he built some of the finest telescopes in the world, grinding the mirrors by hand with help from his sister Caroline, herself a pioneering astronomer.
In 1781 he discovered the planet Uranus, the first planet found since ancient times. He went on to catalogue thousands of nebulae and star clusters, discovered infrared radiation, and showed that the Sun moves through space.
When Ceres and Pallas were found in 1801 and 1802, astronomers did not know what to call them. They were far too small to show a disc in Herschel's telescopes, looking instead like faint points of light, like stars. In a paper read to the Royal Society in May 1802, Herschel proposed calling them asteroids, from Greek words meaning star-like.
Some astronomers disliked the name and preferred minor planets, and both terms are still used. Today more than a million asteroids are known. Nearly all meteorites are pieces of asteroids, knocked off in collisions and steered onto paths that cross Earth's orbit, so Herschel's word sits at the heart of meteorite science.
On the timeline
- May 1802Herschel coins the word asteroid