In 1828 the Royal Astronomical Society awarded its gold medal to Caroline Herschel, the first woman to receive the prize. It wouldn't be awarded to another woman until 1996.
Herschel was also the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science for the discovery of six new comets.
On what would be her 266th birthday, Herschel has been honoured with a Google Doodle. The Doodle shows Herschel searching the skies for comets through her telescope.
Who was Caroline Herschel?
Born in Hanover, Germany in 1750, Herschel was the eighth child of a rural German family. When she was 10 years old Herschel fell ill with typhus, which stunted her growth and left her scarred. She never grew taller than 4 ft 3 in and it was assumed she would never marry.
After a difficult childhood Herschel moved to England to join her brother William Herschel in Bath when she was 22. She began to train as a singer, and sang as a soprano in many performances. Having started his career as a musician, William soon developed a passion for astronomy, which he shared with his sister.
In 1781 William discovered the planet Uranus. Following this major discovery, he was knighted and appointed to the position of King's Astronomer for George III. Herschel, who was in her early thirties by then and still living in England, travelled with her brother and became his assistant.
In this role, Herschel began to make astronomical observations on her own. Then, in the summer of 1786, she made a discovery that no woman had made before her - she discovered a comet. Comets are made up of gas and ice, and have and often have a long tail, or coma. They differ from asteroids, which are made up of rock and metal.
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Herschel's many astronomical discoveries
Herschel went on to discover seven comets, five of which she is given full credit for. Several of the comets she discovered, such as the 35P/Herschel-Rigollet comet, which was last seen in 1939, were named after her. She spotted the first from Slough in 1788.
The moon crater C. Herschel was also named after her, as was the asteroid 281 Lucretia - her second given name.
In recognition of her work as William's assistant, King George III started paying Herschel a salary of £50 (the equivalent of £5,700 in 2016) a year. This made her the first woman to be paid for her contribution to science.
In another first, Herschel was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society's top prize in 1828 for producing a catalogue of nebulae (interstellar clouds of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionised gases). The next woman to win the gold award was Vera Rubin in 1996.
A year before her death, when Herschel was 96 and living in Hanover again, she was awarded a Gold Medal for Science from the King of Prussia. It was given to her "in recognition of the valuable services rendered to Astronomy by you, as the fellow-worker of your immortal brother, Sir William Herschel, by discoveries, observations, and laborious calculations".
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