Caroline Lucretia Herschel was born on March 16, 1750 in Hanover, Germany. She was the eighth of ten total children born to Isaak Herschel and his wife, Anna Ilse Moritzen. 

At the age of ten, Caroline fell ill with Typhus disease, stunting her growth and slightly impacting her eyesight.

Her father was a musician and most of her siblings were musically talented, including herself and older brother William. Caroline wanted to be a singer, but her mother thought it best to teach her how to do household chores because that was practical of women in that time period. 

When her brother William was in his 30s, he moved to Bath, England to be a music teacher and organist. Against her mother’s wishes, 22 year old Caroline moved with him to pursue a career as a singer, appearing as a soloist in many of her brother’s concerts.

Aside from performing in her brother’s concerts, Caroline worked as her brothers housekeeper and assisted him in polishing mirrors for telescopes William built when they were not working on music. Caroline became interested in astronomy through her brother’s hobby and helped him in the discovery of Uranus in 1781. 

After discovering Uranus, William was appointed court astronomer to King George III and began a 20-year survey of the night sky in 1783. He would call out his observations while looking through his telescope and Caroline would record them. Together, they found and recorded 2500 nebulae and star clusters.

William gifted Caroline a telescope called a Newtonian Sweeper for her help, which she used occasionally to study the sky herself. On February 6, 1783, Caroline discovered a cluster on her own, now known as NGC 2360 and went on to discover 14 new nebulae.

On August 1, 1786, Caroline observed an object traveling through the sky. The next night, she saw it again and wrote a letter to alert other astronomers. The object she saw in the sky was a comet, and she became the first woman to ever discover one.