Caroline Herschel

Caroline Herschel swept the night sky for years from the 1780s, finding eight comets and many nebulae, while keeping the records for her brother William's survey of the heavens. After his death she returned to Hanover and, in her seventies, completed a catalogue of the nebulae and star clusters they had found, which her nephew John Herschel extended. The Royal Astronomical Society gave her its gold medal in 1828.