Astronomy as Existential Calibration: A Poetic Manifesto for Science from Two Centuries Before the Golden Age of Space Telescopes

“Astronomy has enlarged the sphere of our conceptions, and opened to us a universe without bounds, where the human Imagination is lost.”

On March 13, 1781, the Solar System bloomed a new planet: The polymathic astronomer John Herschel, who would later coin the word photography, discovered Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun — an icy blue gas giant spinning on its side twofold farther than Saturn.

The Voyager‘s farewell photograph of Uranus. (Photograph courtesy of NASA.)

With the help of hi...