25 August

1822: On 25 August 1822, Sir William Herschel died.

Herschel, whose original name was Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel, was a German-born English astronomer, the founder of sidereal astronomy, the systematic observation of the sky.

Along with his sister Caroline, he discovered the planet Uranus, hypothesised that nebulae are composed of stars, and developed a theory of stellar evolution.