Historedia
Episode 1 of 2

First Use of the 40-Foot Telescope

When
1789
Where
Observatory House, Slough, England
Part of
Discovery of Enceladus by William Herschel

The discovery coincided with the first operational use of Herschel's 40-foot telescope, the largest in the world at the time.

The discovery of Enceladus occurred during the first use of Herschel's new 1.2 m (47 in) 40-foot telescope. The instrument was then the largest in the world, and it was at Observatory House in Slough that Herschel put it to work. In 1789, shortly after the instrument became operational, he also discovered Mimas, a moon of Saturn only 250 miles (400 km) in diameter.

Sources

  1. Enceladus Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-28
  2. William Herschel Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.