The Neptune File by Tom Standage, AllenLane/ The Penguin Press, £12.99,
ISBN 071399472X
ON 13 MARCH 1781, William Herschel spotted something unusual through his
telescope. His first thought was that it was a nebula. Then he saw that this
mysterious body appeared to move against the background of stars: it had to
belong in the Solar System and it must be a comet, he reasoned. In fact, as he
soon realised, it wasn’t a comet at all but a new planet, the seventh in the
Solar System: Uranus.
About 70 years later, in 1846, the German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle…
