At its brightest, Uranus<\/a> is just visible without a telescope \u2013 if you know where to look \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t discovered with the naked eye.<\/p>\n Uranus would certainly have been a very difficult observation to achieve before the birth of the telescope in the 16th century and probably would have, at best, been mistaken for a star.<\/p>\n To make the discovery that it was a planet, astronomers would have been required to track it, but this would have been incredibly difficult to do without a modern equatorial mount<\/a>.<\/p>\n As well as the difficulty in observing Uranus, there was also less interest in cataloguing the planets.<\/p>\n Instead, early astronomers focused primarily on the stars<\/a> and observing constellations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Uranus was quickly found as soon as the telescope became available, although many astronomers didn\u2019t know what they had observed.<\/p>\n John Flamsteed is thought to have been the first person to observe the object we now call Uranus.<\/p>\n His sighting in 1690 was recorded as a star, 34 Tauri.<\/p>\n Other astronomers followed suit in sightings.<\/p>\n Sir William Herschel<\/a> made the discovery of this new planet on 13 March 1781, and then even he initially mistook it for a comet<\/a>.<\/p>\n So it isn\u2019t too surprising the ancients didn\u2019t discover this one.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Why was Uranus not known to ancient astronomers? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":47725,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"2"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus.jpg",1024,639,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus-300x187.jpg",300,187,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus-768x479.jpg",768,479,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus.jpg",800,499,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus.jpg",1024,639,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2023\/07\/why-did-it-take-so-long-for-astronomers-to-discover-uranus.jpg",1024,639,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Why was Uranus not known to ancient astronomers?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/47724"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\""View\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/25\/2020\/01\/See-Uranus-3b6514c-e1611565978598.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C383"\" "\\"\"View\\"\/")
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