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Caroline used a small Newtonian sweeper to study the sky. Feb. 26., 1783: Caroline discovered an open cluster which is now known as NGC 205. It is the companion of the Andromeda Galaxy.

Will also talk about her work with William Herschel and will edit William Herschel's page to add his sister's contributions to his work.

She received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and received an honorary membership.

King George III officially employed her as William Herschel's assistant which gave her a salary. She was the first woman paid for scientific services.

Truman State's library has many books on Caroline Herschel, but they do not have very many Ebooks. I have already checked out two of them, but I will also check out Portraying Caroline Herschel by Patricia Fara (scholarly article). Michael Hoskin has written a lot on Caroline Herschel. I have already read quite a bit of it, but there is still a lot more to read.

Caroline Herschel recorded and called out observations to William Herschel. While he was observing nebulae, Caroline Herschel was writing down all observations and keeping a star catalog by zone of north polar distance. She would tell William Herschel what stars would be coming into view next so that he could use them as reference points to remember the positions of nebulae.

Later in life, she arranged two-and-a-half thousand nebulae into similar zones of north polar distance so that John Herschel could systematically re-examine them.

Dates of Caroline Herschel's life:

http://www.aas.org/cswa/status/2006/JUNE2006/herschel2.jpg

Later, when her observing books were studied, showed that in just the year of 1783, she managed to discover 11 nebulae and clusters that were previously unknown to astronomers.

An account by Astronomer Royal on how Caroline Herschel worked:

I paid Dr & Miss Herschel a visit 7 weeks ago. She shewed me her 5 feet Newtonian telescope made for her by her brother for sweeping the heavens. It has an aperture of 9 inches, but magnifies only from 25 to 30 times,…being designed to shew objects very bright, for the better discovering any new visitor to our system, that is Comets, or any undiscovered nebulae. It is a very powerful instrument, & shews objects very well. It is mounted upon an upright axis, or spindle, and turns round by only pushing or pulling the telescope; it is moved easily in altitude by strings in the manner Newtonian telescopes have been used formerly. The height of the eye-glass is altered but little in sweeping from the horizon to the zenith. This she does and down again in 6 or 8 minutes, & then moves the telescope a little forward in azimuth, & sweeps another portion of the heavens in like manner. She will thus sweep a quarter of the heavens in one night… Thus you see, wherever she sweeps in fine weather nothing can escape her.

Caroline assisted her mother in the management of the household until 1772, when her brother, William, took her to Bath, Eng., where he had established himself as a teacher of music. Once settled in Bath, Caroline trained and performed successfully as a singer. Both she and William gave their last public musical performance in 1782, when her brother accepted the private office of court astronomer to George III. In addition to keeping house for her brother and grinding and polishing mirrors, she began executing the laborious calculations that were connected with his observations. As her interest grew, she swept the heavens with a small Newtonian reflector and made her own observations and astronomical discoveries. In 1787 the king gave her an annual pension of £50 in her capacity as her brother’s assistant. In 1798 she presented to the Royal Society an Index to Flamsteed’s observations, together with a catalog of 560 stars omitted from the British Catalogue and a list of the errata in that publication.

Following William's death in 1822, Caroline returned home to Germany and continued to work on their catalog of nebulae. She received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and received an honorary membership into the Royal Society.

Caroline's Work with William

Caroline Herschel's observing careeer began in the fall of 1782 after her brother, William, accepted an invitation by King George III to become astronomer to the court of Windsor Castle. He took Caroline with him to tend his household and gave her a small refractor. She swept the sky to look for interesting objects. Caroline began encountering Messier objects that had not been seen by William yet. On February 26, 1783, she found two nebulae that were new discoveries. This allowed William to discover that nebulae were a lot more numerous than he originally thought if new ones could be found by a novice. William began sweeping the sky as well, and during the next several years, it he discovered 2000 new galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae.(this source used for next two paragraphs as well)

William built Caroline a new 4.2-inch reflector. Most of her deep-sky discoveries were made in the six months following. At the end of 1783, William realized that his survey of the sky would go a lot faster if he had Caroline write down the observations instead of him having to go inside to do it. Caroline would sit by the window and record all of his observations as he shouted them to her. Caroline would observe, instead, when William was finished or if he was gone for the night.

All of the deep-sky objects Caroline found were unpublished. If William rediscovered one of her objects, he would add her initials to the catalog entry.

Caroline Herschel was appointed her brother's assistant and given an annual stipend of 50 pounds. Herschel's appointment made her the first female in England honored with a government position. She systematically collected data and trained herself in geometry, learned formulas and logarithmic tables, and gained an understanding of the relationship of sidereal time (time measured by means of the stars) to solar time. Herschel calculated and catalogued nearly 2,500 nebulae. She also undertook the task of reorganizing John Flamsteed's British Catalogue, which listed nearly 3,000 stars. Herschel's listings were divided into one-degree zones in order for William to use a more systematic method of searching the skies. On August 25, 1822, William died, leaving Herschel without support. She returned to Hanover, still supported by the British royal family. Herschel continued with her own work in the fields of mathematics and astronomy. In 1825, she had donated the works of John Flamsteed to the Royal Academy of Göttingen.

I found a memoir of Caroline's life. It also includes many letters Caroline wrote after the discovery of a comet or nebulae.

The ten years from 1788 to 1798, although a blank as regards her personal history – the Recollections cease with her brother's marriage – were among the busiest of her life, and in the year last mentioned the Royal Society published two of her works, namely, "A Catalogue of 860 Stars observed by Flamsteed, but not included in the British Catalogue," and "A General Index of Reference to every Observation of every Star in the above-mentioned British Catalogue." It is in reference to these that she wrote the very interesting letter to the Astronomer Royal, which is given among others, in its place, in the Journal. But another work, which was not published, was the most valuable, as it was the most laborious of all her undertakings. This was "The Reduction and Arrangement in the form of a Catalogue, in Zones, of all the Star-clusters and nebulæ observed by Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps." It supplied the needful data for Sir John Herschel when he undertook the review of the nebulæ of the northern hemisphere; and it was for this that the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society was voted to her in 1828, followed by the extraordinary distinction of an Honorary Membership. This Catalogue was not completed until after her return to Hanover, and Sir David Brewster wrote of it as "a work of immense labour," and "an extraordinary monument of the unextinguished ardour of a lady of seventy-five in the cause of abstract science."

The following is a letter Caroline wrote to John Herschel:

MY DEAREST NEPHEW, –

I take the earliest opportunity I have to acquaint you with having received a letter from Mr. H. Goltermann, accompanied with a draft for £2 4s. 6d., which is already received and safely deposited in my writing-desk. But the information that he had had the pleasure of seeing you in good health afforded me the greatest satisfaction, and he further promised me to forward the parcel to you in Downing Street, which was particularly pleasing to me, as I wished to avoid the sending backward and forward by blundering coachmen.

On the 5th of this month I received your letter without date, but conclude it was written about the same time with those of your dear mother and cousin Mary, dated the 9th and fifteenth of January. I delayed answering them (and must do so still for the present) because I knew that all mails were detained this side of the sea.

One passage in your letter affected me much, it was gratifying to me and unexpected: ".... speaks of your English life, &c... But now that you have left the scene of your labours you have the satisfaction of knowing that they are duly appreciated by those you leave behind." But I can hardly hope that those favourable impressions should be lasting, or rather not be effaced by my hasty departure; but believe me I would not have gone without at least having made the offer of my service for some time longer to you, my dear nephew, had I not felt that it would be in vain to struggle any longer against age and infirmity, and though I had no expectation that the change from the pure country air in which I had lived the best part of my life, to that of the closest part of my native city, would be beneficial to my health and happiness, I preferred it to remaining where I should have had to bewail my inability of making myself useful any longer.

I hope you and Lady H. have not suffered by the severity of the weather; to me it has certainly done no good. I am grown much thinner than I was six months ago; when I look at my hands they put me so in mind of what your dear father's were, when I saw them tremble under my eyes, as we latterly played at backgammon together. Good night! dear nephew, I will say the rest to-morrow.

By way of postscript I only beg you will give my love and many thanks to your dear mother and cousin for their kind letters; and if the latter will continue from time to time to inform me of all your well-being, I shall equally feel gratified, for it is no matter from which hand I receive the comfortable information.

I remain, ever your affectionate aunt,

CAR. HERSCHEL.

Found a pretty good journal article about Caroline Herschel. Here is a little bit from it that will be edited and likely added to the main space.

Eventually, Caroline began to work more independently. She initiated her first record book inscribed on three opening pages: 'This is what I call the Bills & Rec.ds of my Comets', 'Comets and Letters', 'Book of Observations From Augt. 28 1782 to Feb. 5, 1787'.ix It, together with two subsequent books, belongs to the invaluable Herschel trove, including the papers of William and John, held by the Royal Astronomical Society in London. On another initial page, she recorded William's instructions to search for comets and nebulae. On 19 November, shortly after the meteor of 18 August 1783 had increased the awareness of celestial phenomena, Piggott discovered a comet that Caroline later spotted and recorded as 'Piggott's comet'. She observed it from 29 November through 19 December and drew it twice inside viewing fields (Figure 5).x William recorded it as well