Tbf looking upward at the sky is a lot easier than taking a giant wooden coffin over thousands of miles of water to find an icy hells ape where almost nothing can survive

tbf, discovering Uranus was a lot less deadly before modern icebreaking ships. Age of Sail ships did not do well down there, and the economic incentives of sealing resulted in quite a lot of casualties back in the day. Doing math and peering through telescopes is much safer.

If our main sensory organs were sound-based or feel-based, we'd probably have discovered a lot of things before planets and stars.

The things that took a while to discover on earth, or that aren't yet fully explored, are largely because it's hard to see them without getting very close, which can be hard.

Building a good telescope might have been hard, but with a telescope you can see things that are millions of km away. But, because of the earth's curvature, you can't see Antarctica until you're practically next to Antarctica. You can't see the bottom of the ocean until you travel to the bottom of the ocean, or at least until you scan it with sound waves which are then converted into something you can see.

Imagine an alien that developed in the water on a planet with sub-surface oceans with ice on top. No real value for eyes, so they're sound / touch based. Picture what it would be like to try to explore the solar system. There's a boundary layer at the top of their "atmosphere" (the top of the ocean) that's solid (ice), beyond that there's some non-liquid extremely sparse stuff, until some point where no sound travels at all and there's nothing to touch.

“The” Antarctica

I mean, I guess there’s only one

I assure you that Uranus has been observed many times by many people dating far back into the past, such as by Hipparchos in 2nd Century BC. They conclusively figured out exactly what it was in 1846.

The Sirius star(s) 8000 light away was discovered before Europe.

Well, we currently know better the moon's surface than our oceans' bottom, so...

It's like it tell my kids, you have to look under and behind things…

Is this the same "discovered" as America was "discovered" in 1492?

I don’t know about you, but I find seeing things to be much easier when there isn’t a planet obscuring it.

Piri reis knew of Antarctica back in the 16th century or something I unno I am no earth scientist

I read about the Antarctic. They kept running into walls of ice before they could find/see it.

To be fair, we don't usually have a clear line of sight to Antarctica.

But you can see one in your backyard sometimes.

Mars surface is studied better than Earth in 2024. Because there are no oceans or trees on Mars.

Some people today couldn't find Uranus with both hands and a flashlight.