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348 but was not able to carry out any extensive or systematic measurements on this plan. With a view to the future detection of such changes of brightness as have just been mentioned, he devised and carried out on a large scale the extremely simple method of sequences. If a group of stars are observed and their order of brightness noted at two different times, then any alteration in the order will shew that the brightness of one or more has changed. So that if a number of stars are observed in sets in such a way that each star is recorded as being less bright than certain stars near it and brighter than certain other stars, materials are thereby provided for detecting at any future time any marked amount of variation of brightness. Herschel prepared on this plan, at various times between 1796 and 1799, four catalogues of comparative brightness based on naked-eye observations and comprising altogether about 3,000 stars. In the course of the work a good many cases of slight variability were noticed; but the most interesting discovery of this kind was that of the variability of the well-known star α Herculis, announced in 1796. The period was estimated at 60 days, and the star thus seemed to form a connecting link between the known variables which like Algol had periods of a very few days and those (of which Mira was the best known) with periods of some hundreds of days. As usual, Herschel was not content with a mere record of observations, but attempted to explain the observed facts by the supposition that a variable star had a rotation and that its surface was of unequal brightness.

267. The novelty of Herschel's work on the fixed stars, and the very general character of the results obtained, have caused this part of his researches to overshadow in some respects his other contributions to astronomy.

Though it was no part of his plan to contribute to that precise knowledge of the motions of the bodies of the solar system which absorbed the best energies of most of the astronomers of the 18th century—whether they were observers or mathematicians—he was a careful and successful observer of the bodies themselves.

His discoveries of Uranus, of two of its satellites, and of two new satellites of Saturn have been already mentioned in connection with his life (§§ 253, 255). He believed