William and John Herschel’s quest for extraterrestrial intelligent life. The extraterrestrial life debate, 1750–1860: The idea of a plurality of worlds from Kant to Lowell. Lunar outgassing, transient phenomena and the return to the moon. Scientific correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765–1820. William Herschel and the ‘front-view’ telescopes. ĭr Lind also wrote at the time: “I think that the Philosophical world are indebted somewhat to Mrs Lind’s good Eyes, as well as Dr Herschel’s excellent Telescope.”. Von Zach continued the story saying that Herschel immediately declared that such a thing was impossible, but soon saw for himself a bright star-like spot on the Moon. This account was corroborated by the Hungarian astronomer Franz von Zach who wrote that Herschel told him that Mrs Lind had seen the ‘star’ first, exclaiming that it was in front of the Moon. But an account from a French geologist, Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond, attests that during a 1784 visit to Slough Herschel told him that it was actually Mrs Lind who first noticed the bright ‘star’ in the dark of the Moon (see Dollfus, 1987: 141–42 see also Hoskin, 2014: 87–91). Herschel’s record does not credit Mrs Lind with first sighting the spot of light. Although Herschel’s lunar research is less well known than other aspects of his fruitful career, it well illustrates his firm commitment, highly unusual in the eighteenth century but commonplace today, to the existence of an active, evolving Universe.

These he interpreted as eruptions of lunar volcanism.

Finally, he monitored the Moon for years and found several instances of temporary bright spots, in particular near the crater Aristarchus in 1787. In addition, he examined lunar topographical features with his excellent reflector telescopes (using speculum mirrors) and concluded that he was seeing evidence of ongoing giant construction projects of a lunar civilization. Careful measurements established that most lunar mountains were no more than 1 km in height (much less than earlier results). The first astronomical research that William Herschel (1738–1822) conducted was directed to the Moon, beginning in 1776 while still a fulltime musician in Bath, England.

Flat earth moon phases