Caroline Herschel Portrait

Caroline Herschel Portrait 1829

Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Caroline Herschel (1750 - 1848) worked with her brother Sir William Herschel in his study of astronomy. Born in Hanover, at the time that George II ruled both England and Hanover, she joined her brother in England in 1772.

Supporting themselves through music, William and Caroline took up astronomy at first in their spare time. She helped to catalog her brother's observations and made observations herself, beginning in 1782, the same year William was appointed King's Astronomer to the new king, George III. She is especially noted for discovery of comets. She began to make an adequate income from her scientific work.

Caroline Herschel Portrait

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