Herschel Museumof Astronomy

The Herschel Museum of Astronomy occupies 19 New King Street, the Georgian townhouse where William Herschel lived with his sister Caroline and discovered the planet Uranus in March 1781, using a telescope he built in the workshop at the back of the house. It opened as a museum on 13 March 1981, exactly two centuries after that discovery, and is now run as a registered charity by the Bath Preservation Trust, which became sole trustee in 2015. Rooms are kept close to their eighteenth-century layout, with the workshop and the garden where Herschel ground his own telescope mirrors both open to visitors. The building is Grade II* listed. The musician Brian May, an astrophysicist by training, has served as the museum's patron since December 2013.