The published account of the first scientific paper, authored by a woman to be read before The Royal Society of London, and one of the first written by a woman to be included in the proceedings of a scientific society anywhere in the world. The discovery of what is now known as Comet C/1786 PT, was first observed by Caroline Herschel, while her brother William was away travelling in Germany. Her deep satisfaction, on many levels, is tangible, as her paper reveals:

"The employment of writing down the observations, when my Brother uses the 20-feet reflector, does not often allow me time to look at the heavens; but as he is now on a visit to Germany, I have taken the opportunity of his absence to sweep in the neighbourhood of the sun, in search of comets: and last night, the 1st of August. about 10 o'clock, I found an object very much resembling in colour and brightness the 27th nebula of the Connoissance des Temps, with the difference however of being round. I suspected it to be a comet; but haziness coming on, it was not possible to intirely [sic] to satisfy myself as to its motion till this evening".

Caroline's announcement of her discovery, in the 'Philosophical Transactions', volume, LXXVII (1787), is the first published scientific paper, in English, authored by a woman. Also without precedent is her immediate reward, by George III, an ardent astronomer himself, of an annual stipend of 50 GBP.

Caroline Lucretia Herschel's (1750-1848) mother, "had no doubt that a daughter's place was in the home, helping with the housework; she opposed all attempts by Caroline to acquire anything more than the most rudimentary education, and resented even the occasional violin lesson given by her father. Caroline tried to acquire some ability in needlework from a kindly neighbour, but for this they had to meet at dawn, for at 7 a.m. her household chores would begin... eventually she was given grudging permission to attend a dressmaking school, but this lasted only a few weeks, after which she resumed her role of household drudge" (Hoskin).

Eventually, Caroline was rescued by her brother, William, who had himself escaped escaped the dismal household, and French occupation in Hanover, by becoming an organist in Bath, England. He "gave [Caroline] two singing lessons daily, sometimes three, as well as teaching her English and arithmetic, and she had coaching from a dancing-mistress to give her the stage presence required for oratorios. Before long she was appearing at Bath or Bristol as many as five nights a week, singing leading soprano parts in works such as Messiah, Samson, and Judas Maccabaeus" (Hoskin).

For William, his interest in heavenly music soon gave way to an obsession with "the construction of the heavens". He began by visiting opticians and then fixated on building his own telescope. By the summer of 1775, Caroline was "taken up with copying Music and practising, besides attendance on my Brother when polishing [telescopic mirrors], that by way of keeping him alife, I was even obliged to feed him by putting the vitals by bits into his mouth". The struggle was made all worthwhile, when in 1781 William discovered Uranus, which secured him, and his now assistant, Caroline, Royal patronage and a move of house to Datchet, near Windsor Castle.

Caroline's principal astronomical task was to look for comets, which she did through her own dedicated telescope, the "sweeper" which William had constructed especially for her. She became famous as the discoverer, or co-discoverer, of "no fewer than eight comets, four with the sweeper made in 1783, three with its successor, and the last, found in 1797, with the naked eye. However, her earliest sweeps, in the winter of 1782–3, yielded not comets but comet-like nebulae, to add to the hundred or so already known. Later in 1783 she was to discover the companion to the Andromeda nebula... Caroline was an indispensable member of a most remarkable team that, in one of the greatest campaigns known to observational astronomy, swept the whole of the visible sky. In twenty years of unremitting toil, brother and sister increased the number of known nebulae from about a hundred to 2500. In 1787 Caroline too received a royal pension, of £50 a year; revealingly, this was the first money that she felt she could consider her own... 1796 [William] persuaded Caroline to assemble a list of these errors, a task that took her twenty months. Her list, with an index to Flamsteed's observations, was published by the Royal Society in 1798" (Hoskin).