The god of the skies!

Uranus was not universally recognised as a planet - the seventh in the Solar System - until March, 1781, despite having been observed as far back as 128 BC. The British astronomer William Herschel initially thought he had discovered a new comet, based on the movement of the object against the background of stars: this parallax motion is evident in the photos below that I took six nights apart. (Since Uranus is around 1.8 billion miles away, the apparent movement is quite small - but visible!)

It took nearly seventy years for  a name to be generally agreed upon : the German astronomer Bode suggested calling the planet Uranus - the latinized  version of the name of Greek god of the skies, Ouaranos.