2 82 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. FT. IIL 



It was at this time, in the midst of active work which 

 kept him fully occupied all the day, that Herschel began 

 those nightly observations which have made his name 

 famous. His interest was at first excited by seeing the 

 stars through a small telescope only two feet in length ; and 

 his desire was so great to be able to penetrate farther into 

 the starry depths, that he sent to London to order a large 

 telescope. When the answer came, however, he found that 

 the price of the instrument was quite beyond his means; 

 and so determined was he to carry out his project, that he 

 set to work to construct a telescope with his own hands. 

 The first one answered so well that he made several others, 

 and at last succeeded in completing one forty feet long. 



From that time he spent the greater part of every night 

 in observing the stars, and on March 13, 1781, when he 

 was examining some near the constellation Gemini, or the 

 'Twins,' he caught sight of one star more conspicuous 

 than those around it. Struck by its size, he put a stronger 

 magnifying power on to his telescope, and found to his 

 surprise that this star became larger, while those round 

 it remained as small as before. Now the fixed stars are so 

 for off that no magnifying power makes any difference in 

 their apparent size ; so Herschel began to suspect that this 

 must be a body very much nearer to our earth than the 

 stars which surrounded it, and he soon found that instead of 

 being fixed, it moved onwards steadily. He thought at first 

 that he had discovered a comet, but it was not long before 

 his wandering star proved to be a new planet, moving round 

 the sun outside Saturn. This planet, which had been marked 

 by Flamsteed as a star nearly a hundred years before, is about 

 half the size of Saturn, and takes more than eighty-four years to 

 go once round the sun. It was first called the 'Georgian star,' 

 after George IIL; then it was called ' Herschel ;' and lastly 



