Caroline's Splash of Light

Caroline’s Splatter of Light

Bath, England, July 1782

Caroline Herschel peered again through the lens as she pondered the tiny speck, she’d seen in the vicinity of the new planet her brother William had discovered just the previous year that he had dubbed, Georgium Sidus in honor of their good, kind King George whose benevolence had allowed their study to continue. Had she actually seen something that looked like a tiny splash of reflected light from that tiny dot of luminescence her lens was focused upon? Could she have seen a different object entirely-a new planet herself? William had only recently trained her on the magic of the wondrous telescope, and she could only use it when he was away. She had eagerly learned all its mysteries and still more were always apparent each time she investigated the sky. Excited, she carefully adjusted the focus to a keen sharpness, and placed her good eye close careful not to move the telescope a fraction, for the area of sky along the solar ecliptic was tiny indeed. One minute vibration would set her view asunder by a degree - a matter of hundreds of thousands of miles if not millions in the backdrop of stars.

There it was again. It appeared as though the tiny light speck had experienced some sort of impact! Had she seen a cosmic collision of something? What could have possibly caused such a thing? She kept observing the barest glimmer of what seemed in her mind exactly what might occur if an object struck a larger, softer object with such force that it would eject some of its mass-like a rock hitting a snowman’s head and knocking icy fragments spraying out from it! The thought made her smile at a memory of just such an occurrence when her brother had built a snowman at the edge of a pond where they had lived in Hanover, Germany when they were younger, and she was just a child. The pond had iced over, and they had all been skating with the abandon of children. A boy about her own age had slid, having slipped on his skates, and gone careening toward the snowman. She had leaned down to help him to his feet when another, older boy seeming upset at her attention to the boy who’d slipped made sudden, jeering taunts and had thrown an ice chunk smashing the side of the poor snowman’s head to get her attention! Her eye began tearing at the memory and from the strain. She blinked. An owl screeched from somewhere above the garden and the sound startled her, bumping the telescope several degrees from her focus area! Alas, after wiping her eyes and settling down, she admitted defeat in attempting to locate the tiny speck again. She decided to have had enough observation for that night and went back inside to prepare a cup of tea before bed.

“What were you gazing upon, dear Sister?”

Caroline immediately became flustered at the sudden appearance of her brother William, who had come home from his meeting much earlier than expected.

“Oh… I was not, I was just admiring”-

“Caroline, I know you have been doing much more then admiring my telescope. Curiosity runs in our veins!”

Caroline timidly stepped over to the fireplace to fetch the kettle from its hook over the baking logs. It had stormed yesterday and brought clear skies yet an unseasonably chilly evening. She felt his gaze upon her as he shook off the damp evening and wiped his feet.

“I was just coming to have some tea, brother. Would you also like some? It is fresh from the ships according to the apothecary!”

“Yes, please.” He removed his cloak and hung it on the wood spike near the door. “So, are you going to tell me the focus of your study? I can barely see it but the slight red ring around your good right eye reveals all!”

“Ah yes, the eye piece!” Caroline hastily rubbed her eye as she used her other hand to place the teapot and cups on the table. “Your meeting did not go well? I assume since you have returned so soon.” She reached in the ceramic pot on the shelf above the table and scooped out a measure of the fragrant, Darjeeling blend and emptied it into the teapot. She then studied her brother for a moment. His long gray locks were slightly askew from the wind and his sharp nose had the barest drip of moisture, but his skin was ruddy, and he looked healthy.

“Actually, it went exceedingly well. The King has graced us with further blessing and has now commissioned me with private office to be his Royal Court Astronomer!” Caroline, who had begun to pour the tea water into the teapot, spilled the stream a bit and nearly dropped the kettle.

“William, that’s quite wonderful!” She carefully finished pouring then set the kettle back on its hook. The heady aroma of the tea filled the room with its delicate bouquet.

“Yes, indeed. We shall now be able to pursue the sky rather than the choir and the music. I never cared that much for it anyway. However, dear sister, we shall be moving much closer to Windsor Castle to Datchet. Now, what did you observe? You have the look of it. I can tell because I wear it myself when I discover something fascinating in the heavens.”

“My beloved Bath," she began as she carefully poured the steeped tea into the cups. "I shall miss it here, William, but it is indeed alluring to be now within the royal offices as such to pursue the noble sky.” She sipped, then set her still too hot cup to cool a moment. “So yes, I did observe a strange thing, but a screech owl startled me and caused me to bump the eyepiece. I am afraid my observation is now thousands of miles askew from its observed spot!”

“And?” He sipped, being hardier to the hot liquid as he peered at her over the cup of tea. “You’re not getting off that easily.”

“Well,” Caroline began, unsure at first how to describe what she had seen. “Do you recall when we were children and we often skated by the pond when it iced over in winter?”

“Of course. What about it?”

“I saw something unusual on a bright star along the ecliptic-perhaps a new planet, but now we will never find it so easily. Well you may or might not recall, there was one day when we had been skating when a boy whom I think may have liked me (as she mentioned this, she felt her face blushing and turned aside a moment) seemed upset at my attention to another boy who had slipped and slid toward the snowman you had built on the shore of that pond like a fisherman with his icy pole you made out of a long stick!” William laughed a hearty, cheery rumble deep in his bosom.

“Of course, I recall. That boy destroyed that snowman! We got into a snowball fight all of us over it!”

“So, the object I observed exhibited something I could only describe by my memory of when that boy had thrown the chunk of ice at the snowman’s head and caused most of it to splatter away!”

“You are describing some type of cosmic impact, dear sister? That is quite remarkable! Perhaps you observed a comet striking an object. Do you recall where in the sky you were looking?”

“Yes, of course I have the general area from your notes and mine, but what ever was struck will be exceedingly difficult to relocate since the telescope was bumped.” She paused and took up her cup to sip the now less hot beverage. “What I observed was exactly similar to what happened to that poor snowman. It was a splatter of light and then the telescope moved.”

“My dear sister, you may have possible evidence of yet another planet besides that large giant one which I discovered last year! Let us finish our tea and I shall immediately conduct an inquiry with your assistance to relocate the area in which you were looking.”

They quickly finished their tea and Caroline followed her brother back to their observatory area. She admired his enthusiasm and acceptance of her observations and the credibility he always had shown her. Indeed, because of this, she had vastly increased her knowledge and usefulness in assisting his astronomical pursuits and her own as well.

Soon, they were deeply engaged upon the delicate task of researching a swath of sky as was the usual nighttime activity of their work. They searched in vain that night for indeed, Neptune was not discovered for another 64 years!

Having not discovered her own notable and historical comet object until the following year and had she had more time improving her technique and taken time to study the point of light further that night on her own, she may indeed have discovered Neptune then, rather than for it remaining hidden for so many more years. If she had done all that, she might have become known for the new planet which came to be known as Neptune which, nearly 230 years later, modern astronomers determined that Neptune had indeed been struck just like the snowman in Caroline’s memory, by a rocky comet splashing into the deep, methane atmosphere. But of course, she did not discover it at that night or later and no one was to observe the continued effect of the debris of sorts that had splashed away into space-only the remains and aftereffects of the impact that were observed by present era Astronomers. Consequently, those fine particles from Neptune and the comet continued in trajectory inward toward the sun at a far greater speed.

Unknown to any observer, a large quantity of the impact debris happened to collide directly with the earth in the following years, perhaps marked by a meteor shower deep in the night with most of the larger fragments striking harmlessly across the vast, frozen expanse of the Arctic Sea from Siberia to Greenland and as far as the future State of Alaska. No scientist or astronomer would link the so called “Little Ice Age” of the period of the 1780’s into the early to mid 1800’s to anything remotely consequential to stellar debris from a comet strike upon Neptune, nor to the particularly harsh winter of 1794-1795 when sea ice had enveloped Iceland for miles in all directions and rivers in the Netherlands froze over allowing a French invasion to cross unabated.

No, that would not ever be associated to anything from space. So, the mysterious element drifting down from the strange comet fragments mixed with Neptune dust settled randomly into the North Polar regions, perhaps having that dismal effect upon the climate, perhaps not. That is a fact none will likely ever associate with the strange bout of the mini-ice age.

However, Caroline’s lone observation that night in 1782 led to more intense study by her and her famous brother William as they moved onward and well into the British Royal realm as bright and celebrated astronomers for the Crown and with her, Caroline having gone on to become the very first woman to hold a government position with a salary dedicated to science at a time when even men had difficulty with such success! Indeed, Caroline Herschel led the way for many women who wished to follow scientific inquiry and careers by having discovered many named comets and heavenly objects, undaunted if but by a lone, screeching owl one night that delayed her scientific contributions but not by much or for very long!