Biographical Memoir of Sir William Herschel. 
With these instruments Mr Herschel examined the Heavens 
with much assiduity and success. His first observations, made 
in 1776, and subsequent years, were published in the Philoso- 
phical Transactions for 1780 *, and related to the “ Periodical 
Star in the Neck of the Whale? and to the (( Height of the Lunar 
Mountains The next paper which he communicated to the 
lioyal Society in 1781, was entitled u Observations on the Rota- 
tion of the Planets round their axes , made with a view to deter- 
mine whether the Earth’’ s diurnal motion is perfectly equable ;V 
and he soon after laid before that learned body his Account of a 
Comet observed on the 18th March 1781, which afterwards 
proved to be a new planet, which he distinguished by the name 
of the Georgium Sidus, in honour of his late Majesty. 
The news of this most important discovery spread rapidly 
over Europe. The astronomers of every country looked for- 
ward with the highest expectations to the future labours of the 
successful discoverer, and the name of Mr Herschel became 
known wherever the science of the heavens was cultivated. His 
Gracious Majesty George III., animated with the munificent 
spirit of a British Sovereign, relieved Mr Herschel from his 
professional labours, and enabled him, by the grant of a hand- 
some salary, to devote the remainder of his days to the exami- 
nation of the heavens. In consequence of this arrangement, so 
fortunate for astronomy, Mr Herschel took up his residence at 
Hatchet, in the neighbourhood of Windsor, where he pursued 
his observations with diligence and zeal, and began a series of 
discoveries, which are without a parallel in the history of astro- 
nomy. 
In 1781, Mr Herschel published a description of “A Micro- 
meter for taking the Angle of Position? or the angle formed by 
a line joining two stars with the direction of their motion ; and 
in 1782, in a paper on the “ Parallax of the Fixed Stars? he re- 
sumed and explained the method proposed by Galileo, of mea- 
suring the angular distance of two contiguous fixed stars, without 
obtaining any results of importance, in so far as the parallax itself 
* Mr Herschel communicated to the Philosophical Society at Bath, in 1780 and 
1781j several mathematical papers on the theory of diversified central powers of 
attraction and repulsion, in relation to the formation of clusters of stars- 
