John Herschel
MAR 07, 2016
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031168
On this day in 1792, astronomer John Herschel was born in Slough, England. He got exposed to astronomy early by his father, William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus. John Herschel spent four years in South Africa and compiled unprecedented catalogs of double stars and nebulas in the Southern Hemisphere skies. He was also a pioneer in photography. In 1835, when the Sun newspaper in New York published a fictionalized report about life on the moon (known as the Great Moon Hoax), the writer attributed the discovery to Herschel.
Date in History: 7 March 1792
© 2016 American Institute of Physics
