The Buzz on the Fuzz

In 1800 the astronomer Baron Franz Xaver von Zach recruited 24 of his fellows into a club, the Vereinigte Astronomische Gesellschaft (United Astronomical Society) which he informally dubbed the "Lilienthal Society" for its meetings in Lilienthal near Bremen.

Determined to bring the Solar System to order, the group became known as the Himmelspolizei or Celestial Police.

Whilst looking for Kepler's missing planet between Jupiter and Mars, on September 1 1804, a member of the Celestial Police, Karl Harding did find an asteroid: the third asteroid to have been spotted and named in the main-belt.

Juno.

The burning and sacking of Lilienthal during the Napoleonic Wars brought this first period of discovery to a close.

A period during with the four main-belt asteroids of Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta - the God'dess archetypal forces - reentered the realm of human consciousness in a new form.

Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781.  He wanted to call it George.

What I have noticed, and I have no idea if anybody else has, is that George and the God'desses were found after not being lost during the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte.  He whom they called The Bee.

What does Napoleon have to do with astronomy?

Consider that the Napoleonic Wars changed for all time the manner in which humankind would wage war upon each other.  Many many things changed irrevocably in the late 18th Century. We are heirs to all that.

Consider the reflective surface of the guillotine's blade......

the bee and the blade
the chalice in the glade.

Napoleon and the Sphinx, by Jean Gerome, 1862

Of his many impressive feats, Napoleon is probably best remembered for a campaign he led prior to his coronation; his 1798 invasion of Egypt, a country that was a province of the Ottoman Empire at the time. One can only muse at the irony of the man they called The Bee riding horsebackin the land of the Bee, staring at an image that may have been named after the Minoans word for Bee; ‘Sphex’

Reference:
Andrew Gough's Arcadia