Caroline Herschel
First discoveries and catalogue

William's interest in astronomy started as a hobby to pass time at night. At breakfast the next day he would give an impromptu lecture on what he had learned the night before. Caroline became as interested as William, stating that she was "much hindered in my practice by my help being continually wanted in the execution of the various astronomical contrivances." William became known for his work on high performance telescopes, and Caroline found herself supporting his efforts. Caroline spent many hours polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes in order to maximize the amount of light captured. She learned to copy astronomical catalogues and other publications that William had borrowed. She also learned to record, reduce, and organize her brother's astronomical observations. She recognized that this work demanded speed, precision and accuracy.

Caroline was asked to move from the high culture of Bath to the relative backwater of Datchet in 1782, a small town near Windsor Castle where William would be on hand to entertain royal guests. He presumed that Caroline would become his assistant, a role she did not initially accept. She was unhappy with the accommodations they had taken; the house they rented for three years had a leaky ceiling and Caroline described it as "the ruins of a place". She was also aghast at the prices in the city and the fact that their domestic servant was imprisoned for theft at the time of her arrival. While William worked on a catalogue of 3,000 stars, studied double stars, and attempted to discover the cause of Mira 's and Algol 's variability, Caroline was asked to "sweep" the sky, meticulously moving through the sky in strips to search for interesting objects. She was unhappy with this task at the beginning of her work, longing for the culture of Bath and feeling isolated and lonely, but gradually developed a love for the work.

On 28 August 1782, Caroline initiated her first record book. She inscribed the first three opening pages: "This is what I call the Bills & Rec.ds of my Comets", "Comets and Letters", and "Books of Observations". This, along with two subsequent books, currently belong to the Herschel trove at the Royal Astronomical Society in London.

On 26 February 1783, Caroline made her first discovery: she had found a nebula that was not included in the Messier catalogue. That same night, she independently discovered Messier 110 (NGC 205), the second companion of the Andromeda Galaxy. William then began to search himself for nebulae, sensing that there were many discoveries to be made. Caroline was relegated to a ladder on William's 20-foot reflector, attempting impossible measurements of double stars. William quickly realized his method of searching for nebulae was inefficient and he required an assistant to keep records. Naturally, he turned to Caroline.

But it was not til the last two months of the same year before I felt the least encouragement for spending the starlight nights on a grass-plot covered with dew or hoar frost without a human being near enough to be within call.

In the summer of 1783, William finished building a comet-searching telescope for Caroline, which she began to use immediately. Beginning in October 1783, the Herschels used a 20-foot reflecting telescope to search for nebulae. Initially, William attempted to both observe and record objects, but this too was inefficient and he again turned to Caroline. She sat by a window inside, William shouted his observations, and Caroline recorded. This was not a simple clerical task, however, because she would have to use John Flamsteed 's catalogue to identify the star William used as a reference point for the nebulae. In 1798 Caroline presented to the Royal Society an index to John Flamsteed’s observations, together with a catalog of 560 stars omitted from the British Catalogue and a list of the errata in that publication. Because Flamsteed's catalogue was organized by constellation, it was less useful to the Herschels, so Caroline created her own catalogue organized by north polar distance. The following morning, Caroline would go over her notes and write up formal observations, which she called "minding the heavens."
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