It all started in August 1779 when William Hershel began an extensive study of all the stars in the night sky. He was looking for examples of parallel stars so he could measure parallax, but he discovered instead proved to be much more significant. One night as he was tracking stars and recording observations, Hershel found something unexpected. It wasn't a star, but he wasn't sure what it was. He wrote it off for a couple days, but when he went back to observe it later, he found that it had changed position. Taking this and other observations into account, he determined that what he had discovered was a comet. He used his telescope to make a few more Observations, and then sent his findings to more astute astronomers. Hershel was, after all, just an amateur, and a discovery of this magnitude deserved more research and observation than he could provide. …show more content…
Even believing that Hershel's original diameter measurement was inaccurate. It wasn't until much later that the Astronomer Royal suggested that the strange object might be a planet, and even later after that that enough research and observation was conducted for it to be accepted as