An endless desert, where extreme of cold

Eternal sits, as in his native seat,

On wintry hills of never-thawing ice;

Such Herschell’s earth.”

His mean distance from the sun is about 1,800,000,000 miles, and he performs his revolution from west to east round the sun in 83 years, 294 days, 8 hours, 39 minutes; and in his orbit he moves with a velocity of 15,846 miles an hour. His diameter is 4½ times larger than that of the earth, being more than 35,000 miles; and his magnitude is 80½ times larger than that of the earth. The orbit in which he revolves is nineteen times further from the sun than the earth’s orbit; consequently he has 361 times less light and heat from the sun than we have. Notwithstanding this, his proportion of light is considerable; for having been calculated, it is found to be equal to the effect of 284 of our full moons. When the sky is very serene and clear, and the moon absent, this planet may be perceived with the naked eye, unassisted by a telescope: and it appears as a star of the fifth magnitude, with a blueish white light, and a brilliancy between that of Venus and the Moon.

The want of light arising from the great distance of this planet from the sun, is supplied by six satellites, which revolve at different distances round their primary.

Distances and Revolutions of the Satellites of the Georgium Sidus.
Revolution.
Satellite Distance.d.h.m.s.
1st 226,450 5 21 25 0
2d 293,053 8 17 0 0
3d 342,784 10 23 0 0
4th 392,514 13 11 0 0
5th 785,028 38 1 49 0
6th 1,570,057 107 7 35 10

All these satellites, it has been said, perform their revolutions in their orbits contrary to the order of the signs; that is, their real motion is retrograde, but probably, as suggested by Dr. Hutton, this is an optical illusion.[130] As the indefatigable Dr. Herschell has already discovered six satellites belonging to this planet, does not its immense distance from the sun leave some ground for conjecture, that there may remain some undiscovered, and that his attendants are as numerous, if not more so, than those of Saturn?

☉ The Sun
☽ The Moon
☿ Mercury
♀ Venus
⊕ The Earth
♂ Mars
♃ Jupiter
♄ Saturn
♅ Herschell, or
Georgium Sidus.

The mark which characterises the planet Herschell is the initial of the discoverer’s name, intersected by a cross bar to represent a cross, by which to denote that the discovery of the planet took place after the birth of Christ.