William Herschel's Observatory

[Mapman]

William Herschel is a composer and astronomer who has barely been mentioned on this forum. I've always liked the oboe concertos, with memorable melodies. Richard Woodhams (former principal oboist of the Philadelphia Orchestra) gives fantastic performances of them.



Chandos recorded some of his symphonies for their Contemporaries of Mozart series.



There are a few other recordings of his music, mostly not easily available.

Herschel is probably most famous for discovering Uranus. He also demonstrated that infrared radiation is related to light, by measuring the temperatures of colors of light split by a prism. (The area with no visible light just past red has a higher temperature than red light!) He and his sister Caroline also catalogued star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae, creating the foundation for the New General Catalogue.

(I had posted most of this in the Identify Your Avatar thread in the Diner; I thought that it would be good to put it in a more visible place.)

[vandermolen]

Interesting! The CD cover looks like your avatar.
I visited his home/Astronomy Museum in Bath a few years ago.
https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/

[krummholz]

Interesting, I've never heard anything by him though of course the name is very familiar (I teach astronomy!)... he was definitely quite the polymath. In addition to the achievements mentioned in the OP, he was one of the first to try to create a sort of "map" showing the shape of the Milky Way Galaxy as a whole, and to estimate its dimensions. He was WAY off by modern standards of course - both due to the limitations of his (homebuilt) telescope, and because the disk of the Galaxy is full of opaque dust lanes.

[relm1]

That is cool and interesting.  Perfect for me too as a composer who frequently writes music inspired by outer space. Added to my listening list.

[Mapman]

Interesting! The CD cover looks like your avatar.
I visited his home/Astronomy Museum in Bath a few years ago.
https://herschelmuseum.org.uk/

Both images are of the same planet.

My parents and I considered a trip to Southwest England a few years ago, and Bath would have been a stop. (We went to Scotland instead.) When I visited London, I went to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, where they have the remaining sections of Herschel's 40-foot telescope on display.

[vandermolen]

Both images are of the same planet.

My parents and I considered a trip to Southwest England a few years ago, and Bath would have been a stop. (We went to Scotland instead.) When I visited London, I went to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, where they have the remaining sections of Herschel's 40-foot telescope on display.

That sounds like a good trip.