Herschel’s record does not credit Mrs Lind with first sighting the spot of light. Although Herschel’s lunar research is less well known than other aspects of his fruitful career, it well illustrates his firm commitment, highly unusual in the eighteenth century but commonplace today, to the existence of an active, evolving Universe. These he interpreted as eruptions of lunar volcanism. Finally, he monitored the Moon for years and found several instances of temporary bright spots, in particular near the crater Aristarchus in 1787. In addition, he examined lunar topographical features with his excellent reflector telescopes (using speculum mirrors) and concluded that he was seeing evidence of ongoing giant construction projects of a lunar civilization. Careful measurements established that most lunar mountains were no more than 1 km in height (much less than earlier results). The first astronomical research that William Herschel (1738–1822) conducted was directed to the Moon, beginning in 1776 while still a fulltime musician in Bath, England.
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