Art Fusco
  • Home
  • Scribe's Journal
    • NuTrek articles
    • Kevin Smith
    • Frank Kimball
    • Before First Contact
    • NCPD History
    • Local Newspaper Clippings
  • Store

Focus - Uranus, Sol

7/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Took a short break from my studies, but will return to writing "Manifest Destiny" shortly. In the meantime, I bring you the story of Uranus:
In 1781, a man named Sir William Hershel peeked into the back end of his telescope and observed a particular star named "34 Tauri". This star had been observed since antiquity, but for some reason when Hershel observed it, it wasn't at its recorded position... it moved. He was tickled by this and concluded that 34 Tauri was actually a comet, not a star. After more observations, however, he realized that there was a gaping... wide problem: it was much bigger and gassier as a whole. After calculating that it rotated around the Sun in an almost perfect circle, he and the rest of the world realized that 34 Tauri was actually not a star or a comet, but a planet that was beyond Saturn.
Picture
Blue planet seen from Earth
This discovery made his King very happy. King George III was the same King who tried to clench tightly to the American Colonies in the late 1770s, but was forced to release 13 of them after years of buildup and discomfort. King George decided to loosen up and pay Hershel some booty for his discovery. When people probed Hershel on what he was going to name this planet, he decided to be a kiss ass and named it "Georgium Sidus", or George's Star. Though the King felt cheeky about this, outside of Britain, people plugged up at the name, and Hershel became the butt end of ridicule. People soon began to push hard for alternative names. Soon a few of them began to poke out, such as the name "Hershel" after it's discoverer; "Neptune" after the Greek God of the sea, and in honor of the British Naval fleet; or "Ouranos", God of the sky after the father of the Greek God Saturn.
People were wide open to the idea of the sky god, so to back the idea up, a newly discovered element was then named "Uranium". "Uranus" was finally pushed through as the official name of the planet in 1850, wiping the planet clean of all the old names that had clung on. For years since, we were only able to sneak a peek at Uranus through the eye holes of telescopes until January 24, 1986, when a tiny satellite named Voyager 2 whizzed by the planet snapping pictures on the way, exposing Uranus and its moons for all to see. In that mission, we learned that there were 15 moons clinging on to Uranus.
Picture
Uranus is huge!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

      Do you see this?

    Submit

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    December 2022
    April 2022
    October 2021
    July 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    September 2013

Proudly powered by Weebly