William Herschel - Sun 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 should not wonder if, considering all this, we were induced to think that nothing remained to be added; and yet we are still very ignorant in regard to the internal construction of the sun.... The spots have been supposed to be solid bodies, the smoke of volcanoes, the scum floating on an ocean of fluid matter, clouds, opaque masses, and to be many other things.... The sun itself has been called a globe of fire, though, perhaps, metaphorically.... It is time now to profit by the observations we are in possession of. I have availed myself of the labors of preceding astronomers, but have been induced thereto by my own actual observation of the solar phenomena.

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
That the emission of light must waste the sun, is not a difficulty that can be opposed to our hypothesis. Many of the operations of Nature are carried on in her great laboratory which we cannot comprehend. Perhaps the many telescopic comets may restore to the sun what is lost by the emission of light.

William Herschel
According to my theory, a dark spot in the sun is a place in its atmosphere which happens to be free from luminous decompositions [above it].

William Herschel
In this case, radiant heat will at least partly, if not chiefly, consist, if I may be permitted the expression, of invisible light; that is to say, of rays coming from the sun, that have such a momentum as to be unfit for vision. And admitting, as is highly probable, that the organs of sight are only adapted to receive impressions from particles of a certain momentum, it explains why the maximum of illumination should be in the middle of the refrangible rays; as those which have greater or less momenta are likely to become equally unfit for the impression of sight.

William Herschel
That stars are suns can hardly admit of a doubt. The sun turns on its axis; so do variable stars; most probably all stars. Stars have spots like the sun; in some stars we know these spots to be changeable.

William Herschel
The influence of this eminent body [the sun], on the globe we inhabit, is so great, and so widely diffused, that it becomes almost a duty for us to study the operations which are carried on upon the solar surface.

William Herschel
Since stars appear to be suns, and suns, according to the common opinion, are bodies that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a system of planets, we may have an idea of the numberless globes that serve for the habitaton of living creatures.

William Herschel
While every one of the motions of the earth that arise from the actions of the sun, moon, and planets, etc., have been investigated by astronomers, there is one motion which has hitherto escaped the scrutiny of observers - the diurnal rotation round its axis.

William Herschel
This way of considering the sun removes the great dissimilarity between its condition and that of the other great bodies of the system. The sun then appears to be nothing else than a very eminent, large, and lucid planet '.most probably also inhabited by beings whose organs are adapted to the peculiar circumstances of that vast globe.

William Herschel
The sun is the celestial body which should first attract our notice, not only on its own account but since the fixed stars are, by the strictest analogy, similar bodies.

William Herschel
We need not hesitate to admit that the Sun is richly stored with inhabitants.

William Herschel