Article ID: CBB722993822

Herschel's spurious moons of Uranus: their impact on satellite orbital theory, celestial cartography and literature (2020)

unapi

Positing unobserved satellites and attempting to establish a mathematical framework to explain the orbits of planetary satellites was inspired by the law of planetary distances made popular by Johann Bode, Director of Berlin Observatory, although applying orbital proportionality to posit the existence of more satellites predates Bode's Law by nearly a century. Whatever its merits, Bode's Law has played an important role in the history of astronomy but the application of a power-law approach to planetary satellite orbits has received scant attention. Several German-language papers of the late eighteenth century, never before printed in English, are used here to study this issue. This paper examines that topic in the context of Uranus, and goes further in offering the first comprehensive study of the four spurious satellites claimed by William Herschel and how they were represented - or misrepresented - in both literature (covering seven languages) and maps of the Solar System for a century after their 'discovery'.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB722993822/

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Authors & Contributors
Steinicke, Wolfgang
Kragh, Helge S.
Hoskin, Michael A.
Cunningham, Clifford J.
Kennett, Carolyn
Falkner, David E.
Concepts
Astronomy
Solar system; planets
Celestial maps; star catalogs
Uranus
Moons of other planets
Telescopes
Time Periods
18th century
19th century
17th century
Modern
Enlightenment
Places
Great Britain
Bath (England)
Thailand
Myanmar (Burma)
England
Southeast Asia
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