HERSCHEL'S SPURIOUS MOONS OF URANUS: THEIR IMPACT ON SATELLITE ORBITAL THEORY, CELESTIAL CARTOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE

Abstract

Positing unobserved satellites and attempting to establish a mathematical framework to explain the orbits of planetary satellites was inspired by the law of planetary distances made popular by Johann Bode, Director of Berlin Observatory, although applying orbital proportionality to posit the existence of more satellites predates Bode's Law by nearly a century. Whatever its merits, Bode's Law has played an important role in the history of astronomy but the application of a power-law approach to planetary satellite orbits has received scant attention. Several German-language papers of the late eighteenth century, never before printed in English, are used here to study this issue. This paper examines that topic in the context of Uranus, and goes further in offering the first comprehensive study of the four spurious satellites claimed by William Herschel and how they were represented—or misrepresented—in both literature (covering seven languages) and maps of the Solar System for a century after their 'discovery'.