William Herschel - Heavens Quotes

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These [binary stars] may serve another very important end.... Several stars of the first magnitude have been observed or suspected to have a proper motion; hence we may surmise that our sun, with all its planets and comets, may also have a motion towards some particular point of the heavens.... If this surmise should have any foundation, it will show itself in a series of some years in a kind of systematical parallax, or change due to the motion of the whole solar system.

William Herschel
I must freely confess that by continuing my sweeps of the heavens my opinion of the arrangement of the stars and their magnitudes, and of some other particulars, has undergone a gradual change...

William Herschel
A knowledge of the construction of the heavens has always been the ultimate object of my observations...

William Herschel
It is very probable that the great stratum called the Milky Way is that in which the sun is placed, though perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness.... We gather this from the appearance of the Galaxy, which seems to encompass the whole heavens, as it certainly must do if the sun is within it.

William Herschel
In future... we shall look upon those regions into which we may now penetrate by means of such large telescopes, as a naturalist regards a rich extent of ground or chain of mountains containing strata variously inclined and directed, as well as consisting of very different materials. The surface of a globe or map therefore will but ill delineate the interior parts of the heavens.

William Herschel
Here, truly, is a hole in the heavens!

William Herschel
"Does it not seem natural that these observations should cause a strong suspicion that most probably every star in the heavens is more or less in motion?" For though their proper motions could not cause all these changes, yet we may well suppose that motion is in some way concerned.

William Herschel
He broke through the barriers of the heavens

William Herschel
The subject of the Construction of the Heavens is of so extensive and important a nature, that we cannot exert too much attention in our endeavors to throw all possible light upon it.

William Herschel
We may strongly suspect that there is not, in strictness of speaking, one fixed star in the heavens, and reasons which I shall adduce will render this so obvious that there can hardly remain a doubt of the general motion of all the starry systems, and, consequently, of the solar one among the rest.

William Herschel
It has generally been supposed that it was a lucky accident that brought this new star to my view; this is an evident mistake. In the regular manner I examined every star of the heavens, not only of that magnitude but many far inferior, it was that night its turn to be discovered.

William Herschel