Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany and migrated to Great Britain when he was 19 years old. His first profession was serving as an oboist in the Hanoverian Guards military band, but he is better known for his discoveries as an astronomer. With a royal grant of £4,000, Herschel began construction on the largest telescope built at the time, the Great Forty-Foot, a title held for fifty years. The telescope was built at Observatory House in Slough, England. It was a reflecting telescope, one using curved mirrors reflecting light to produce an image; a refracting telescope uses lenses to magnify a distant image. Herschel had already discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 and had added significant knowledge in understanding binary and multiple star systems. Using the Great Forty-Foot, he discovered two more moons orbiting Saturn in 1789: Mimas and Enceladus.
