Official News - page 6

A PLANET CALLED GEORGE

by Hazed

Did you know that the planet Uranus nearly ended up with quite a different name? Its discover, William Herschel, wanted to call it George after the British monarch at the time. Herschel had every reason to be grateful to King George III because he was made Court Astronomer of the King and awarded an annual grant by the crown, which enabled him to give up his career in music and concentrate on astronomy full time.

However, he was overruled - presumably by fellow astronomers - and the planet was given the more classic name Uranus instead, which doesn't sound nearly so prosaic.

It's probably just as well, otherwise we would have missed out on the many opportunities for smutty humor that the name Uranus gave us, at least until its pronunciation was altered a while back!

And people scoffed when I added an asteroid called Doris to the Solar System...

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