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One evening in 1781, a professional musician and amateur astronomer named William Herschel went into the garden of his home in Bath, pointed his home-made telescope at the heavens and discovered the planet Uranus. Yet even though the discovery made him famous almost overnight, earning him the respect of the world's greatest astronomers and a lifetime pension from George III, it was the least of his scientific accomplishments. Working with his sister Caroline as an assistant, Herschel set out to identify every object in the heavens, measure the distances to the stars, determine the shape of the Milky Way and understand the history and evolution of the universe. And in doing so, he more or less invented modern astronomy, nearly single-handed.

Michael D. Lemonick spent more than 20 years as a writer for Time magazine, writing more than 50 cover stories on science and medicine, and has contributed to Scientific American, New Scientist, Discover, National Geographic and People magazines. He has also written four books on astronomy; his latest, "The Georgian Star," a biography of the 18th-century astronomer William Herschel. Lemonick teaches journalism at Princeton University, and has taught as well at Johns Hopkins, Columbia and New York Universities. He holds an AB from Harvard College an MSJ from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University