William Herschel was a self-taught learner and amateur astronomer. On that evening, he was looking through the self-made telescope as usual. A star in the area of Gemini seemed strange to him. It had a form of a small disk instead of bright dot. Diligent Herschel fixed the observation in his journal: “strange look – either a star surrounded by nebula, or a comet.” Then, he finally decided that it was a comet and sent a letter to the Royal Society. The discovery did not go unnoticed. A couple of months later, academician Lexell from Saint Petersburg and French scientist Laplace calculated the orbit of this celestial body and proved that it was a planet. It was named Uranus. After the discovery of Uranus, unexpected surprises pleasing for Herschel and his research followed: the amateur astronomer was elected a member of the Royal Society in London. Moreover, he gained doctoral degree, knighthood and the position of Royal astronomer with life-long salary. After that, he discovered two satellites of Uranus and a couple of Saturn’s ones.
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Information provided by the Scientific Russia News Agency. Media outlet’s registration certificate: IA No. FS77-62580 issued by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media on July 31, 2015.
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