We wrote about the life of Caroline Herschel, who had a difficult life due to the disease she caught at the age of ten, who wanted to continue her career as a singer, but who made a name for herself by exploring the sky with her brother and discovering a comet.
Her full name is Caroline Lucretia Herschel, she was born on March 16, 1750, in Hannover, Germany. She was born as the eighth child of her father, Issak Herschel, an oboist, and her mother, Anna Ilse Moritzen. With Pirna roots in her family, Herschel's father first became a bandleader in 1731 and worked away with her regiment for long periods of time. Her father, who fell ill after the Battle of Dettingen in 1743, never fully recovered and had to live with a weak constitution, chronic pain and asthma for the rest of her life. Caroline's older sister named Sophia, who is sixteen years older than her, is her only surviving sibling other than Caroline. At the age of five, Caroline did most of the housework and took a cursory education with her siblings, learning to read, write, and a little more.
At the age of ten, Caroline contracted a serious disease of typhus that prevented her from growing, and she could not grow taller than 4 feet 3 inches (1.30 m). She also suffered from vision loss in her left eye as a result of her illness. After her father's death, they were offered by her brothers William and Alexander to accompany them to Bath, England, where her brother William spent her probationary period as a singer for church performances. Leaving Hanover on August 16, 1772, Caroline first became acquainted with astronomy through constellations and optician shops on her trip to England.
In Bath, taking on the responsibilities of William's household, Caroline began learning to sing. Caroline failed to mingle with the local community and was able to make a few friends. Later, she was able to satisfy her desire to learn and began taking regular singing, English and arithmetic lessons from her brother and dance lessons from a local teacher. Learning to play the harpsichord, Caroline became an integral part of William's musical performances. Being the lead singer in oratorio concerts, Caroline gained great fame as a vocalist. Refusing to sing for any conductor other than William, Caroline's career as a singer began to decline after these performances.
William wanted to spend less time rehearsing to focus on astronomy and replaced Caroline as a performer with outstanding soloists from outside the region. During William's work on transforming from a musician to an astronomer, Caroline supported her sister again. In the 1770s, William became more interested in astronomy. Although Caroline wanted to pursue a career as a professional singer, her brother supported her while she was working and read books.
As a result of her collaboration with her, Caroline has become an important astronomer in her own right. The Herschels moved into a new home in March 1781, and Caroline kept stock from the night of March 13, when William discovered the planet Uranus. Although she thought it was a comet, her discovery proved the superiority of her new telescope.
William's interest in astronomy began as a hobby, and Caroline became as interested as William. Known for her work on high-performance telescopes, William realized that Caroline supported her. To support her brother, Caroline would spend hours polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes. Also learning to record, reduce and edit her brother's astronomical observations, Caroline realized that this work would be done with speed, precision and accuracy.
Caroline was asked to move to Datchet, a small town near Windsor Castle, where William would be present to welcome royal guests in 1782. Initially reluctant, Caroline was dissatisfied despite the compromise. While William studied different subjects, Caroline did the process of "sweeping" the sky, meticulously moving in stripes across the sky in search of interesting objects. Unsatisfied with this task at the beginning of her work, Caroline felt lonely. But as she worked on it, she developed a love for work.
On August 28, 1782, Caroline began her first registry and wrote the first three landing pages, "This is what I call the Bills and Records of My Comets," "Comets and Letters," and "The Observation Books." The following year, Caroline found a nebula not included in her first discovery, the Messier catalogue. That same night, she unwittingly and independently found the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy, "Messier 110" (NGC 205). Caroline tried to make impossible measurements of double stars.
In the summer of 1783, William built a comet-search telescope for Caroline and immediately began using it. Beginning in October 1783, the Herschels began using a 6-metre reflecting telescope to look for nebulae. Initially, William tried to both observe and record objects. But with that failing, William told her observations and Caroline recorded it. But she had to use John Flamsteed's catalog to identify the star that William used as a reference point for the nebulae. Because Flamsteed's catalog was organized by constellation, it was less useful, causing Caroline to create her own catalog organized by north pole distance. The next morning, Caroline will go over her notes and write down her official observations, which she calls "looking at the sky."
Between 1786 and 1797, she discovered eight "comets", the first of which was on August 1, 1786. Taking unquestioned priority as the discoverer of the five comets, Caroliene rediscovered "Comet Encke" in 1795. Five of her comets were published in Philosophical Transactions, and William continued with Caroline summoning her comet to Windsor Castle to show the royal family. William himself recorded this phenomenon, calling it "My Sister's Comet."
In 1787, the job was taken by George III for £50 a year for working as William's assistant. The coining of Caroline made history by making her the first woman in England to be honored with an official government position and the first woman to receive payment for her work in astronomy. It was also the first money Caroline earned on her own. The following year, William married Mary Pitt, a widow. This marriage caused strain in the brothers' relationship. Separated from her siblings, Caroline continued to go to work with her brother every day. This led to Caroline becoming a figure in her own right, and she continued her work independently of William, making many discoveries.
In 1791, Caroline began using a 9-inch telescope to search for the comet. Thanks to this tool, she discovered three comets. She later discovered the fifth comet on December 15, 1791, and the sixth comet on October 7, 1795, she.
In 1797, William showed inconsistency in a catalog of stars published by John Flamsteed, and Caroline was tasked with rearranging them to properly explore these differences. In 1798, Caroline published this catalog of the Royal Society, which contains an index of every observation of every star. There was also a bug list and a list of over 560 stars not included, made by Flamsteed. In August 1799, Caroline spent a week in Greenwich as a royal guest and became known for her work as an independent.
In 1802, the Royal Society published the scientific journal "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A", Caroline's catalogue, under William's name. This included 500 new nebulae and clusters, close to the 2,000 currently known.
After her brother died in 1822, Caroline was overcome with grief and returned to Hanover, Germany. She continued her astronomical work to confirm William's findings and compiled a nebula catalog to assist William's son, John Herschel, in her studies, and spent most of her time working on the catalog. In 1828 she was honored with the Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society for her work.
Caroline socialized regularly with other scientific intellectuals, managing to remain physically active and healthy throughout her life. Caroline, who spent her final years writing her memoirs and complaining about her body's limitations, was prevented from making any more original discoveries because of her health.
Caroline died at her home in Hanover on January 9, 1848, and was buried next to her family at the Gartengemeinde cemetery in Hanover. Having discovered more than 2,400 astronomical objects in two decades with her brother, Caroline was named "Asteroid 281 Lucretia" after Caroline's second given name, and is honored by naming the "C.Herschel" crater on the Moon after her. On March 16, 2016, Google honored her with a "Google Doodle" on her 266th birthday.
Caroline was awarded a gold medal from the Astronomical Society in 1828 for her efforts, possibly unique in size or importance in the annals of astronomical study. In 1846 she was crowned with the Gold Medal by the King of Prussia for valuable services to astronomy she.
Asteroid 281 was named "Lucretia" in Caroline's honor. The open clusters "NGC 2360"(Caroline's Cluster) and "NGC 7789"(Caroline's Rose) were unofficially nicknamed in Caroline's honor. On November 6, 2020, a satellite named after Caroline was launched into space. In 2022, the Herschel Museum in Bath planned to house a handwritten draft of Herschel's memoirs, which will be on display in 2023.