Jay M. Passachoff

Hopkins Observatory at Williams College in Williamstown

Abstract

The Comets of Caroline Herschel, Sleuth of the Skies at Slough (with Roberta J. M. Olson)

Building on the research of Michael Hoskin and our book Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in British Art and Science, we examine the work on comets of Caroline Herschel, the first female comet-hunter. After leaving Bath for Observatory House at Slough near Windsor Castle, she discovered at least 8 comets. Five of these are reported in the Philosophical Transactions. Along with Charles Messier, dubbed by Louis XV "the comet-ferret," Caroline Herschel was among the most assiduous observers of the skies. Like Messier, she also studied nebulae and deep sky objects to distinguish them from comets. She lived during an exciting period in post- Enlightenment Georgian England, an era when comets were topical, still being defined and separated from other transient denizens of the solar system, and comet fever rampant. Her brother William, the King's Astronomer and a prolific maker of telescopes, made three comet- sweepers for her, such as the Sweeper (1795). Among the topics to be considered are: Caroline Herschel's telescopes (including her small Newtonian reflector); her public image and astronomers' perceptions of her contribution to astronomy; and the style of her astronomical drawings and how they changed with the technological developments in astronomical illustration. We conclude with her nephew John Herschel's drawings of P/Halley's apparition in 1835, when Caroline was 86 years old.

Biographical Details

Jay M. Pasachoff is Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy and director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts. He has been President of the Commission on Education and Development of the International Astronomical Union and Chair of the Astronomy Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is Chair of the IAU's Working Group on Solar Eclipses. Starting in 2011, he will be Chair-Elect of the History of Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society. He is the author and co-author of textbooks in astronomy, author of the Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, and co-author with Roberta Olson of Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in British Art and Science.  He is a veteran of 50 solar eclipses.