@psuedenham

This is Uranus, the giant ice planet discovered by William Herschel in 1781. Later observers noticed that its orbit didn’t quite match the path predicted by Newton’s laws of gravity. Some hypothesised that another, unknown, planet must be exerting a gravitational pull, diverting Uranus from its predicted orbit. French astronomer LeVerrier calculated where such a planet might be and sent his prediction to the Berlin Observatory in September 1846. That very night, the giant planet Neptune was observed through telescopes for the first time, almost exactly where LeVerrier predicted it would be. Utterly mind-blowing. #astronomy #mathematics #telescope #newtonslaw #gravity #historyofastronomy #historyofseeing