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When did William Herschel discover Uranus?
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Uranus
Two views of the southern hemisphere of Uranus, produced from images obtained by Voyager 2 on Jan. 17, 1986. In colours visible to the unaided human eye, Uranus is a bland, nearly featureless sphere (left). In a colour-enhanced view processed to bring out low-contrast details, Uranus shows the banded cloud structure common to the four giant planets (right). From the polar perspective of Voyager at the time, the bands appear concentric around the planet's rotational axis, which is pointing nearly toward the Sun. Small ring-shaped features in the right image are artifacts arising from dust in the spacecraft's camera.
William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus on March 13, 1781.1
While conducting a survey of the night sky, Herschel initially identified the object as a "curious either nebulous star or perhaps a comet" because it possessed a clearly visible disk unlike the stars he was observing. Within months of further observation, it was determined that the object was actually a planet orbiting well beyond Saturn. This discovery was significant as it was the first planet to be identified since prehistoric times.21