Observing the night sky from his garden, amateur astronomer William Herschel noticed a small disk that did not behave like a star. Initially he believed it was a comet, but continued observation revealed a near-circular orbit far beyond Saturn. The discovery doubled the known size of the solar system and made Herschel, a former musician, instantly famous, eventually earning him a royal pension from King George III.
William Herschel was not a professional astronomer when he made his discovery — he was a Hanoverian-born musician working in England who ground his own telescope mirrors as a hobby, achieving a level of optical quality that rivaled the Royal Observatory's instruments. On the night of March 13, 1781, while conducting a systematic survey of double stars from his home in Bath, he noticed an object in the constellation Gemini that appeared as a tiny disk rather than a pinpoint of light.
Herschel initially reported it to the Royal Society as a comet, since planets beyond Saturn were unimaginable at the time — the solar system's boundary had stood at Saturn since ancient observers first charted the sky. But as astronomers tracked its nearly circular orbit over subsequent months, it became clear this was something unprecedented: a seventh planet, doubling the known diameter of the solar system overnight.
Herschel wanted to name it 'Georgium Sidus' after King George III, who rewarded him with an annual stipend of £200 that let him abandon music for astronomy permanently. Continental astronomers balked at a patriotic English name, and the planet was eventually christened Uranus, after the Greek god of the sky, following a suggestion by German astronomer Johann Bode.