Neptune’s discovery was attributed to study of perturbations of the orbit of Uranus. (No snickering, now, boys.) Le Verrier in France and John Couch Adams in England had been been independently working to find the unknown planet’s orbit. In a somewhat desultory effort, astronomers at the Cambridge Observatory had observed and recorded the position of Uranus months before it was observed at Berlin, in response to Le Verrier’s published orbit, within a degree of the prediction.
Adams, and the Cambridge Observatory get no credit, except for precovery observations, because they did not follow up, and confirm that the observations were a planet. It was just one of a number of faint uncatalogued stars, which were too numerous to study. Galle and d’Arrest had access to as yet unpublished charts of area of the sky in which Neptune happened to be, and recognized it immediately upon observation.
BTW, I own this book and paid $140 bucks for it:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/3030542173?ref_=ppx_hzsearch_conn_dt_b_fed_asin_title_1
Thanks LiM, was hoping you’d see this one.
Wait... 140 bucks... does your wife know about this?!? ;^) :^D
Couldn’t find it used (apart from Amazon, still $100) but there are ample supplies of new copies, and there are related archival works that will likely be of interest:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=neptune&_sacat=267&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313