Page:Sir William Herschel, his life and works (1881).djvu/72

50 was felt almost more in the moral than the scientific world. The mystic number of the planets was broken up by the introduction of four satellites to Jupiter. That Venus emulated the phases of our moon, overthrew superstition and seated the Copernican theory firmly. The discovery of "an innumerable multitude of fixed stars" in the Milky Way confounded the received ideas. This was the great mission of the telescope in hands.

The epoch of mere astronomical discovery began with the detection of the large satellite of Saturn by, in 1655. Even then superstition was not dead. did not search for more moons, because by that discovery he had raised the number of known satellites to six, and because these, with the six planets, made "the perfect number twelve."

From 1671 to 1684 Author:Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered four more moons revolving about Saturn. Since 1684 no new body had been added to