Shakespeare's Moons

William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781 -- the first planet found that wasn't visible to the naked eye. He was surveying the sky with a homemade telescope when he noticed an object that moved. He thought it was a comet. It was something bigger. Overnight, the known solar system doubled in size.

Six years later, on January 11, 1787, Herschel pointed his telescope at Uranus and noticed two faint points of light orbiting it. Moons. He called them Titania and Oberon, after the fairy queen and king in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Most celestial bodies were named after Greek and Roman mythology. Herschel chose Shakespeare.

The decision set a precedent. Every subsequent Uranian moon -- Ariel, Umbriel, Miranda, Cordelia, Ophelia, Puck -- was named after characters from Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. They're the only celestial bodies in the solar system named for literary characters. A small rebellion against convention.

Herschel was a musician before he was an astronomer. He played oboe, composed symphonies, built his own telescopes because he couldn't afford to buy one. His sister Caroline assisted him, discovering comets of her own.

titania, the largest moon of uranus, photographed by voyager 2 in 1986. source: wikimedia commons

Titania and Oberon are small, dark, cold. Titania is the largest Uranian moon but only half our Moon's diameter -- cratered ice marked by canyons. Voyager 2 flew by in 1986, the only spacecraft to visit. No missions are planned to return.

Herschel expanded the map and named his discoveries after stories, connecting the cosmos to human imagination. Just as Newton connected apples and moons through gravity, Herschel connected distant moons to Shakespeare's fairies. Titania and Oberon are still out there, spinning in the dark -- proof that science and poetry are companions, not opposites.