Caroline Herschel

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Caroline Lucretia Herschel (1750--January 1848) was a German astronomer, whose most notable contributions to astronomy were the discovery of many comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name.

She was William Herschel's younger sister, with whom she worked throughout her career. She was the first woman to be paid as a scientist.

She was the first woman in England to hold a government position.

She was the first woman to be given a Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1828) and the first woman to be named an Honorary Member of the Royal Astronomical Society (1835, with Mary Somerville).

She was also named an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy (1838).

On the occasion of her 96th birthday (1846), the King of Prussia awarded her with a Gold Medal for Science.

Early life

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born in Hanover, on March 16, 1750. Issak Herschel, a self-taught oboist, and his partner, Anna Ilse Moritzen, had their eighth child and fourth daughter. The Herschel family is a descendent of Pirna, Saxony's near Dresden. Issak, a member of the Hanover Foot Guards, was a bandmaster who first joined in 1731 and was away with his regiment for lengthy stretches of time. He became sick after the Battle of Dettingen (part of the Austrian Succession) in 1743 and never fully recovered; he suffered from a weak constitution, chronic pain, and asthma for the remainder of his life. Sophia, the oldest of their children, was sixteen years old and the only living girl other than Caroline. She married when Caroline was five years old, implying that the younger child was tasked with a large share of the household chores. Caroline and the other children received a cursory education, learning to read and write, and little more. Her father attempted to educate her at home, but his attempts were mostly fruitful with the boys.

Caroline was born with typhus, which stunted her growth, to the point that she never grew taller than 4 feet (3 inches), 1.30 m). As a result of her illness, she had vision loss in her left eye. Her family was afraid she would never marry, and her mother felt it was safer for her to be a house servant rather than being educated in accordance with her father's wishes. Her father often profited from her mother's absence by instructing her privately or including her in her brother's lessons, such as violin. Caroline was able to learn dressmaking for a brief period of time. Although she learned needlework from a neighbor, her attempts were stymied by long hours of household chores. She was forbidden from becoming a governess and gaining her freedom that way, but not more advanced needlework than what she could pick up from neighbors.

Following her father's death, her siblings William and Alexander suggested that she join them in Bath, England, for a trial period as a performer for musician brother William's church performances. After her brother's arrival with their recalcitent mother, Caroline eventually left Hanover on August 1672. She was first introduced to astronomy on the trip to England by the constellations and opticians' stores.

She took on the challenge of running William's household in Bath and began learning to sing. At 19 New King Street, Bath (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy), William established himself as an organist and music educator. He served as the choirmaster of the Octagon Chapel. William was very busy with his musical career and became very active in arranging public concerts.

Caroline did not fit in with the local culture and made few friends, but she was finally able to indulge her curiosity, and obtained regular singing, English, and arithmetic lessons from her brother, as well as dance lessons from a local instructor. She learned to play the harpsichord and later became a key player in William's musical performances at small gatherings. She became the principal singer at his oratorio concerts and gained such a fame as a vocalist that she was given an engagement in Birmingham, where she was the first soloist. She refused to perform for any conductor but William, but after that appearance, her career as a performer began to decline. Caroline was then promoted as a performer by distinguished soloists from outside the region because William wanted to spend less time in rehearsals to pursue astronomy rather than astronomy.

Later life and legacy

Caroline was devastated and returned to Hanover, Germany, to confirm and confirm William's findings and assisting her nephew John Herschel in his duties after her brother's death in 1822. However, her findings were hampered by Hanover's architecture, and the bulk of her time was spent on the catalog. The Royal Astronomical Society awarded her with their Gold Medal for this service in 1828, and no woman will be honoured again until Vera Rubin in 1996. Following William's burial, her nephew, John Herschel, took responsibility for attending at Slough. When Caroline showed him the constellations in Flamsteed's Atlas, she gave him his first glimpse of astronomy. On January 31, 1824, Caroline added her final article to her observing book about the Great Comet of 1823, which had already been observed on 29 December 1823. Caroline stayed physically fit and healthy during her lifetime, as well as regularly socializing with other scientific luminaries. She spent her remaining years writing her memoirs and remarking her body's inability, which barred her from making any more original discoveries.

Caroline Herschel died peacefully in Hanover on January 9th, 1848. She is buried in Marienstrasse, Hanover, next to her parents and with a lock of William's hair. "The eyes of her adorned here below turned to the stars of the stars, not to the stars of heaven," her tombstone inscription says. She and her brother discovered over 2,400 astronomical objects in a span of 20 years. The asteroid 281 Lucretia (discovered 1888) was named after Caroline's second given name, and her crater C. Herschel on the Moon was named after her.

Caroline Herschel's "Planetarium," Adrienne Rich's 1968 poem "Planetarium," honors her life and scientific accomplishments. The Dinner Party, which honors historical women who have made notable contributions, also includes a place setting for Caroline Herschel. On her 266th birthday (16 March 2016), Google honoured her with a Google Doodle.

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Astronomical career

William's astronomy obsession began as a hobby to pass the time at night. He would give an impromptu lecture on what he had learned the night before at breakfast the next day. Caroline became as interested as William, claiming that her participation was "very hindered in my participation in the execution of the various astronomical contrivances." William was known for his work on high-performance telescopes, and Caroline found herself supporting his efforts. In order to increase the amount of light captured, Caroline spent many hours polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes. She learned how to read astronomical catalogs and other publications that William had borrowed. She also learned to record, reduce, and organize her brother's astronomical observations. She understood that this kind of work needed speed, precision, and accuracy.

Caroline was asked to move from Bath's high culture to Datchet's relative backwater in 1782, a small town near Windsor Castle, where William will be on hand to welcome royal guests. Caroline was assumed to be his assistant, a position she did not immediately accept. Caroline was dissatisfied with the houses they had rented for three years; the house they rented for three years had a leaky ceiling, and Caroline described it as "the ruins of a house." She was also concerned about the city's high cost of living and the fact that their domestic servant was imprisoned for stealing at the time of her arrival. Caroline was encouraged to "sweep" the sky, meticulously waving through the sky in strips to look for interesting objects while William was working on a catalog of 3,000 stars, double stars, and trying to find the cause of Mira's and Algol's ambiguities. At the start of her career, she was dissatisfied with her work, longing for Bath's culture, and feeling lonely and lonely, but she gradually developed a passion for the work.

Caroline wrote her first book on August 28th, 1782. "This is what I call the Bills & Rec.ds of my Comets," "Comets and Letters," and "Books of Observations" were the first three opening pages. This, as well as two other books, are now part of the Royal Astronomical Society in London's Herschel trove.

Caroline made her first discovery on February 26, 1783, when she discovered a nebula that was not listed in the Messier catalogue. Messier 110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy, was found by the woman that night alone. William began to look into nebulae, knowing that there are some more to be discovered. Caroline was relegated to a ladder on William's 20-foot reflector, trying to get impossible measurements of double stars. William soon learned that his method of looking for nebulae was ineffective, and he needed an assistant to keep track. Naturally, he went to Caroline.

William began constructing a comet-searching telescope for Caroline in the summer of 1783, which she used immediately. The Herschels began searching for nebulae starting in October 1783 using a 20-foot reflecting telescope. Initially, William attempted to both observe and record objects, but it was inefficient, and he moved to Caroline. William yelled his observations inside, and Caroline sat outside a window, and Caroline recorded it. This was not a straightforward clerical job, however, because she'd have to use John Flamsteed's catalog to identify the actor used as a reference point for the nebulae. Because Flamsteed's catalog was not arranged by constellation, it was less useful to the Herschels, so Caroline created her own catalog sorted by north polar distance. Caroline will go over her notes and write up formal observations about "minding the heavens" the following morning.

She recorded eight comets in 1786–97, the first on August 1st, when her brother was away and she was using his telescope. She had no prioritization as the discoverer of five of the comets and rediscovered Comet Encke in 1795. In Philosophical Transactions, five of her comets were published. A packet of paper with the superscription "This is what I call the Bills and Receipts of my Comets" has some details associated with their discovery. William was summoned to Windsor Castle to witness Caroline's visit to the royal family. William described this phenomenon as "My Sister's Comet," and referred to it as "My Sister's Comet." Caroline Herschel is often credited as the first woman to detect a comet, but Maria Kirchner confirmed a comet in the early 1800s, but it is often ignored because at the time, the woman's husband, Gottfried Kirch, was responsible for the finding.

She wrote a letter to Royal Nevil Maskelyne to announce the discovery of her second comet. Maskelyne wrote back in December 1788, thanking her. On 7 January 1790, the third comet was discovered, and the fourth one was discovered on 17 April 1790. Both of these items were revealed to Sir Joseph Banks, and they were the first to be found with her 1783 telescope. Caroline began using a 9-inch telescope for her comet-searching in 1791 and found three more comets with this device. Her fifth comet was found on December 15, 1791, and the sixth on October 1795. "My brother wrote an account of it to Sir J," Caroline wrote in her journal at this time. For the find of her fifth comet, the bank, Dr. Maskelyne, and several astronomical correspondents" are among the missing. On August 6, 1797, her eighth and last comet was discovered, the only comet she found without optical aids. She announced the discovery by giving a letter to Banks. In 1787, she was paid £50 (equivalent to £6,800 in 2022) for her service as William's assistant. Caroline's appointment made her the first woman in England to be honoured with a permanent government role, as well as the first woman to be rewarded for her contributions to astronomy.

William's findings in 1797 showed that there were several anomalies in the star catalogue, which was impossible to use because it had been published as two volumes, the catalogue proper and a collection of original observations, which contained numerous mistakes. William knew that he needed a good cross-index to properly investigate these differences, but he was reluctant to dedicate time to it at the expense of his more interesting astronomical pursuits. He recommended to Caroline that she do the job, but it took 20 months. The resulting Catalogue of Stars, based on Mr. Flamsteed's Observations, was released by the Royal Society in 1798 and included an index of every observation of every celebrity made by Flamsteed, a list of errata, and a list of more than 560 celebrities that had not been included. Caroline donated Flamsteed's work to the Royal Academy of Göttingen in 1825.

She has consistently stated that she wanted to earn a living wage while also being able to support herself. She became the first woman to receive a salary for services to science when the crown began paying her for her brother's assistance in 1787, at a time when even men were struggling to obtain wages for scientific organizations. Caroline's pension was £50 a year, and it was the first money she had ever earned in her own right.

The union between William and Mary Pitt (née Baldwin), a wealthy widow, in 1788, caused confusion in the brother-sister relationship. Caroline has been portrayed as a cynical, cynical woman who adored her brother and resented those who invaded their domestic lives. Richard Holmes' book The Age of Wonder is more sympathetic to Caroline's position, acknowledging that the change was in some respects negative for Caroline. Caroline felt she was no longer involved in the household and assisting her in the case of William's wife's arrival. She went from the house to external accommodation, returning daily to work with her brother. She no longer held the keys to the observatory and workroom, where she had performed significant amounts of her own duties. Her thoughts about the period are not entirely understood because she destroyed her journals from 1788 to 1798. When she spent a week in Greenwich as a visitor of the royal family in August 1799, she was first acknowledged for her work.

Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond said she and her brother continued to do well during this period. She often returned to help her brother and his family when they were away from home to take care of it for them. She and Lady Herschel exchanged affectionate letters in later years, and she became closely attached to her nephew, astronomer John Herschel.

Caroline became more free of her brother and became more a figure in her own right as a result of William's marriage. Caroline made many discoveries independently of William and continued to work solo on several of the astronomical projects that contributed to her rise to fame.

The Royal Society published Caroline's catalogue in its Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A under William's name in 1802. Around 500 new nebulae and cluster clusters were found in this article, out of reach of the previously estimated 2,000. Caroline's aunt, John Herschel, organized two-and-a-half thousand nebulae and star clusters into zones of varying polar distances so that her nephew, John Herschel, could re-examine them systematically. The list was eventually expanded and renamed New General Catalogue. Many non-stellar objects can also be identified by their NGC number.

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