International Space Hall of Fame :: New Mexico Museum of Space History :: Inductee Profile Inducted in 1980 Discovered Pluto. Clyde William Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois on February 4, 1906. He grew up on the family farm there until 1922 when the Tombaughs moved to a farm northwest of Burdett, Kansas. Clyde developed an early love of astronomy after an uncle loaned him a telescope. A graduate of Burdett High School in 1925, he was financially unable to attend college. Tombaugh pursued his interest in astronomy, and in 1926, built his first homemade telescope. He built two more telescopes in the next two years, mastering optics, grinding his own lenses and mirrors, and further honing his observational skills. Using these homemade telescopes, Tombaugh made drawings of the planets Mars and Jupiter and sent them to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The staff there was impressed by his work, and in 1929, Tombaugh was hired to conduct planet-search photography at Lowell, specifically the attempt to find what was called "Planet-X," thought to be on the fringes of the solar system. On February 18, 1930, Clyde Tombaugh earned a permanent place in history when he discovered what was then acclaimed as the ninth planet, which was officially named Pluto on May 1, 1930. Smaller than Mercury and billions of miles from the Sun, the discovery of Pluto with the technology of the time is an enduring testament to Tombaugh's dedication and eye for detail. He was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal and Gift by the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his discovery, as well as a scholarship to University of Kansas. In 1932, Tombaugh enrolled there, earning a Bachelor of Science degree four years later. He continued to work at Lowell Observatory during the summers, and after graduation, returned to Flagstaff to work full-time. He soon returned to college, and in 1939, received his master's degree, also from the University of Kansas.

During his fourteen years at the Lowell Observatory, Clyde Tombaugh discovered hundreds of variable stars and asteroids, and two comets. While engaged in the search that yielded Pluto, he also found many previously unknown star clusters, clusters of galaxies, and a nova. He mapped the Great Perseus-Andromeda Stratum of Extra-Galactic Nebulae, one of over 29,000 galaxies he documented. Dr. Tombaugh remained at the observatory until 1943, then taught navigation for the Navy at Arizona State College (now Northern Arizona University) in Flagstaff until the end of the Second World War in 1945. As the Lowell Observatory did not have the financial resources to rehire him after the war, Tombaugh became a Visiting Assistant Professor in Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles until 1946, when he transferred to the ballistics research laboratories at the White Sands Proving Ground (now White Sands Missile Range, or WSMR) New Mexico. As Chief of the Optical Measurements Section there, he developed tracking telescopes used to photograph rockets and missiles during test flight. Dr.

Tombaugh also directed optical and photographic research in the Systems Engineering Branch at White Sands. He designed many new instruments there, among them, in 1951, a camera called the IGOR (Intercept Ground Optical Recorder), which remained in use at White Sands for the next thirty years. After nine years at White Sands, Tombaugh left in 1955. He later received the medal of the Pioneers of White Sands Missile Range for his work there. From 1953 to 1955, he also led the Near Earth Satellite Search, an Army project conducted by the Lowell Observatory. This search was crucial in identifying any small natural satellites of the Earth as a preparatory step to beginning space exploration. This project was transferred from White Sands Proving Ground to the Physical Science Laboratory at New Mexico State University (NMSU) when Tombaugh took a position there in 1955. Fours year later, Tombaugh's group released the Near Earth Satellite Search final report. As no natural satellites had been found by the survey, NASA had some assurance that rockets, and eventually humans, could be sent into space without colliding with natural orbiting debris.

From 1955 until his retirement in 1973, Clyde Tombaugh was on the faculty at New Mexico State University. From 1958 to 1973, he directed the NMSU photographic Planetary Patrol of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In addition to that project, until 1968, Dr. Tombaugh also conducted research such as studying the geology of Mars and helping chose a location for an Air Force observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. By the time Clyde Tombaugh retired, he and his Planetary Patrol researchers had confirmed the daily rotation period of Mercury, determined the vortex nature of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and developed a new photographic technique for the small Earth satellites search. Reflecting on his career late in his life, Tombaugh often said: "I've really had a tour of the heavens." In 1972, the Clyde W. Tombaugh Observatory on the New Mexico State University campus was dedicated. Out of the Darkness, The Planet Pluto, an autobiographical account of his greatest discovery was published with co-author Patrick Moore in 1980. The same year the Clyde W.

Tombaugh IMAX Theater and Planetarium opened in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 1986, the Clyde Tombaugh Scholars Fund in support of postdoctoral fellowship at New Mexico State University was established. Dr. Tombaugh conducted astronomical research long after his 1973 retirement. When the Smithsonian Institute asked if it could exhibit the nine-inch telescope he constructed in 1928 with which he made the drawings that impressed the Lowell Observatory staff, he told them he was still using it. Until shortly before his death, Tombaugh used that telescope, built with parts of discarded farm machinery and a shaft from his father's 1910 Buick, to make observations from his back yard in Mesilla Park, near Las Cruces. On January 17, 1997, Clyde W. Tombaugh died at his home at the age of ninety-one. After he was cremated some of his ashes were placed aboard the New Horizons probe, which was launched on January 19, 2006, and scheduled to reach Pluto in 2015. Asteroid 1604 Tombaugh is named in his honor.

With recent advances in telescopes, a host of objects have been discovered circling the sun in the "Kuiper Belt," an area extending billions of miles into the outer reaches of the solar system beyond the planet Neptune. One "Kuiper Belt Object" (KBO) called Eris, is actually larger than Pluto. Several other "KBOs" (also called minor planets) are only slightly smaller than Pluto. Thousands more such objects may be found by the New Horizons probe after it leaves Pluto for the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt. The existence of Eris and other minor planets similar to Pluto led the International Astronomical Union to officially re-classify Pluto as a Minor Planet on August 24, 2006. Clyde W. Tombaugh quotes: "I thought I'd better check this third plate, which is another date, see if there's an image there in the right place that would be consistent with the images on the other plates. That was the final proof." (On the discovery of Pluto) "A person that much interested in science is going to neglect his social life somewhat, but not completely, because that isn't healthy either.

So one has to work it out according to one's own inclinations, how one wants to proportion these things." "Getting the invitation to go to Flagstaff was a real piece of luck, but the other was preparing myself. I think of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius. He said, 'The future belongs to those who prepare for it,' and I never forgot that." "I guess he thought it would create awkward academic implications for a discoverer of a planet to be taking beginning astronomy." "I had a strong sense of responsibility, I wanted to be flexible also, and I just worshipped knowledge and spared no pains to do the job very well. I also had an enormous amount of perseverance. I learned that on the farm." "I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life in the future? What would I do for a living?" "I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education." "I think the driving thing was curiosity about the universe. That fascinated me.

I didn't think anything about being famous or anything like that, I was just interested in the concepts involved." "I used to think about how nice it would be to visit the planets. Of course, I didn't expect to see in my lifetime what has happened. I knew it would happen some day, but it came along faster than I at first thought." "That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can't do it myself, I don't deserve to get it." "You have to have an alertness to deal with the unexpected. The history of science is filled with almost-made discoveries, missed by a hairline because they didn't have the alertness to realize they had a discovery." "You have to have hope. Otherwise, I don't think you could handle it. Of course, you have to have both luck and pluck to make it." © 2005- 2016 The New Mexico Museum of Space History , a Division of the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs . Photographs not the property of the New Mexico Museum of Space History appear courtesy of NASA image archives.

New Mexico Museum of Space History | PO Box 5430 | Alamogordo, NM 88311-5430 575-437-2840/877-333-6589 Learn more about Clyde Tombaugh, the man with Las Cruces ties who discovered Pluto - KVIA KVIA Learn more about Clyde Tombaugh, the man with Las Cruces ties who discovered Pluto Posted: Jul 14, 2015 01:29 PM MDT Updated: Aug 24, 2016 01:09 AM MDT Shown at left is a NASA New Horizon's closest approach of Pluto on July 14. Shown at right is a picture of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto. NASA, El Paso Community College Shown at left is a NASA New Horizon's closest approach of Pluto on July 14. Shown at right is a picture of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto. Read below to learn more about the life of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto.

Clyde William Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois on February 4, 1906. He grew up on the family farm there until 1922 when the Tombaughs moved to a farm northwest of Burdett, Kansas. Clyde developed an early love of astronomy after an uncle loaned him a telescope. A graduate of Burdett High School in 1925, he was financially unable to attend college. Tombaugh pursued his interest in astronomy, and in 1926, built his first homemade telescope. He built two more telescopes in the next two years, mastering optics, grinding his own lenses and mirrors, and further honing his observational skills. Using these homemade telescopes, Tombaugh made drawings of the planets Mars and Jupiter and sent them to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The staff there was impressed by his work, and in 1929, Tombaugh was hired to conduct planet-search photography at Lowell, specifically the attempt to find what was called "Planet-X," thought to be on the fringes of the solar system.

On February 18, 1930, Clyde Tombaugh earned a permanent place in history when he discovered what was then acclaimed as the ninth planet, which was officially named Pluto on May 1, 1930. Smaller than Mercury and billions of miles from the Sun, the discovery of Pluto with the technology of the time is an enduring testament to Tombaugh's dedication and eye for detail. He was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal and Gift by the Royal Astronomical Society in recognition of his discovery, as well as a scholarship to University of Kansas. In 1932, Tombaugh enrolled there, earning a Bachelor of Science degree four years later. He continued to work at Lowell Observatory during the summers, and after graduation, returned to Flagstaff to work full-time. He soon returned to college, and in 1939, received his master's degree, also from the University of Kansas. During his fourteen years at the Lowell Observatory, Clyde Tombaugh discovered hundreds of variable stars and asteroids, and two comets. While engaged in the search that yielded Pluto, he also found many previously unknown star clusters, clusters of galaxies, and a nova.

He mapped the Great Perseus-Andromeda Stratum of Extra-Galactic Nebulae, one of over 29,000 galaxies he documented. Dr. Tombaugh remained at the observatory until 1943, then taught navigation for the Navy at Arizona State College (now Northern Arizona University) in Flagstaff until the end of the Second World War in 1945. As the Lowell Observatory did not have the financial resources to rehire him after the war, Tombaugh became a Visiting Assistant Professor in Astronomy at the University of California at Los Angeles until 1946, when he transferred to the ballistics research laboratories at the White Sands Proving Ground (now White Sands Missile Range, or WSMR) New Mexico. As Chief of the Optical Measurements Section there, he developed tracking telescopes used to photograph rockets and missiles during test flight. Dr. Tombaugh also directed optical and photographic research in the Systems Engineering Branch at White Sands. He designed many new instruments there, among them, in 1951, a camera called the IGOR (Intercept Ground Optical Recorder), which remained in use at White Sands for the next thirty years.

After nine years at White Sands, Tombaugh left in 1955. He later received the medal of the Pioneers of White Sands Missile Range for his work there. From 1953 to 1955, he also led the Near Earth Satellite Search, an Army project conducted by the Lowell Observatory. This search was crucial in identifying any small natural satellites of the Earth as a preparatory step to beginning space exploration. This project was transferred from White Sands Proving Ground to the Physical Science Laboratory at New Mexico State University (NMSU) when Tombaugh took a position there in 1955. Fours year later, Tombaugh's group released the Near Earth Satellite Search final report. As no natural satellites had been found by the survey, NASA had some assurance that rockets, and eventually humans, could be sent into space without colliding with natural orbiting debris. From 1955 until his retirement in 1973, Clyde Tombaugh was on the faculty at New Mexico State University. From 1958 to 1973, he directed the NMSU photographic Planetary Patrol of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

In addition to that project, until 1968, Dr. Tombaugh also conducted research such as studying the geology of Mars and helping chose a location for an Air Force observatory near Cloudcroft, New Mexico. By the time Clyde Tombaugh retired, he and his Planetary Patrol researchers had confirmed the daily rotation period of Mercury, determined the vortex nature of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, and developed a new photographic technique for the small Earth satellites search. Reflecting on his career late in his life, Tombaugh often said: "I've really had a tour of the heavens." In 1972, the Clyde W. Tombaugh Observatory on the New Mexico State University campus was dedicated. Out of the Darkness, The Planet Pluto, an autobiographical account of his greatest discovery was published with co-author Patrick Moore in 1980. The same year the Clyde W. Tombaugh IMAX Theater and Planetarium opened in Alamogordo, New Mexico. In 1986, the Clyde Tombaugh Scholars Fund in support of postdoctoral fellowship at New Mexico State University was established. Dr. Tombaugh conducted astronomical research long after his 1973 retirement.

When the Smithsonian Institute asked if it could exhibit the nine-inch telescope he constructed in 1928 with which he made the drawings that impressed the Lowell Observatory staff, he told them he was still using it. Until shortly before his death, Tombaugh used that telescope, built with parts of discarded farm machinery and a shaft from his father's 1910 Buick, to make observations from his back yard in Mesilla Park, near Las Cruces. On January 17, 1997, Clyde W. Tombaugh died at his home at the age of ninety-one. After he was cremated some of his ashes were placed aboard the New Horizons probe, which was launched on January 19, 2006, and scheduled to reach Pluto in 2015. Asteroid 1604 Tombaugh is named in his honor. With recent advances in telescopes, a host of objects have been discovered circling the sun in the "Kuiper Belt," an area extending billions of miles into the outer reaches of the solar system beyond the planet Neptune. One "Kuiper Belt Object" (KBO) called Eris, is actually larger than Pluto.

Several other "KBOs" (also called minor planets) are only slightly smaller than Pluto. Thousands more such objects may be found by the New Horizons probe after it leaves Pluto for the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt. The existence of Eris and other minor planets similar to Pluto led the International Astronomical Union to officially re-classify Pluto as a Minor Planet on August 24, 2006. Clyde W. Tombaugh quotes: "I thought I'd better check this third plate, which is another date, see if there's an image there in the right place that would be consistent with the images on the other plates. That was the final proof." (On the discovery of Pluto) "A person that much interested in science is going to neglect his social life somewhat, but not completely, because that isn't healthy either. So one has to work it out according to one's own inclinations, how one wants to proportion these things." "Getting the invitation to go to Flagstaff was a real piece of luck, but the other was preparing myself. I think of the Chinese philosopher, Confucius.

He said, 'The future belongs to those who prepare for it,' and I never forgot that." "I guess he thought it would create awkward academic implications for a discoverer of a planet to be taking beginning astronomy." "I had a strong sense of responsibility, I wanted to be flexible also, and I just worshipped knowledge and spared no pains to do the job very well. I also had an enormous amount of perseverance. I learned that on the farm." "I have a lot of sympathy for young people because I realize how disturbed I was. How would I deal with life in the future? What would I do for a living?" "I realized that I would have some very tough sledding, and I was very discouraged because I didn't see much hope of getting into the field I wanted to get into with no college education." "I think the driving thing was curiosity about the universe. That fascinated me. I didn't think anything about being famous or anything like that, I was just interested in the concepts involved." "I used to think about how nice it would be to visit the planets. Of course, I didn't expect to see in my lifetime what has happened.

I knew it would happen some day, but it came along faster than I at first thought." "That's the way I got along in life. I don't ever remember being particularly jealous of anybody, because I figured if I can't do it myself, I don't deserve to get it." "You have to have an alertness to deal with the unexpected. The history of science is filled with almost-made discoveries, missed by a hairline because they didn't have the alertness to realize they had a discovery." "You have to have hope. Otherwise, I don't think you could handle it. Of course, you have to have both luck and pluck to make it." Source: International Space Hall of Fame at the New Mexico Museum of Space History Pluto discoverer's ashes are aboard New Horizons probe - CNN.com 1 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon The New Horizons team has discovered a chain of exotic mountains that are covered in methane snow on Pluto. NASA released an image of the snow-capped mountains stretching across the dark expanse of Cthulhu on March 3.

Hide Caption 2 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon NASA released a photo on February 4, 2015, of what it suspects is an image of floating hills on Pluto's surface. The hills are made of water ice and are suspended above a sea of nitrogen. Hide Caption 3 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image made in infrared light shows water ice is abundant on Pluto's surface. The image was created using two scans of Pluto made by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, when the probe was about 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) above Pluto. Hide Caption 4 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This photo shows the the mountainous shoreline of Sputnik Planum. "The mountains bordering Sputnik Planum are absolutely stunning at this resolution," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute. Read full caption. Hide Caption 5 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image shows the layered interior walls of the planet's many craters.

According to NASA, "layers in geology usually mean an important change in composition or event." However, NASA says the New Horizons team members do not know if they are seeing local, regional or global layering. Most of the craters seen here lie within the 155-mile (250-kilometer)-wide Burney Basin. Learn more at NASA's website. Hide Caption 6 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image shows how erosion and faulting has sculpted Pluto's icy crust into rugged badlands. The prominent 1.2-mile-high cliff at the top is part of a great canyon system that stretches for hundreds of miles across Pluto's northern hemisphere, NASA says. Learn more at NASA.gov. Hide Caption 10 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon These photos show Pluto's variety of textures, including what NASA calls "rounded and bizarrely textured mountains." The mountains are informally called the Tartarus Dorsa. This image shows about 330 miles (530 kilometers) of Pluto's terrain. It combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the space probe's Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera.

The images were taken on July 14, during the probe's flyby. They were released on September 24. Hide Caption 11 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon The photos taken by New Horizons just before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14 are the sharpest images to date of Pluto's varied terrain. This high-resolution image reveals details of two ice mountains. The image spans 75 miles (120 kilometers) of Pluto's surface. Hide Caption 12 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image of the surface of Pluto was taken just 15 minutes after NASA's New Horizon spacecraft made its closest approach to the icy planet on July 14. As it looked toward the Sun, the spacecraft's camera captured more than dozen thin layers of haze in Pluto's atmosphere, at least 60 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. The photo was downlinked to Earth on September 13. Hide Caption 13 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image of Pluto's icy and mountainous landscapes was taken from a distance of 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers).

"This image really makes you feel you are there, at Pluto, surveying the landscape for yourself," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado. Hide Caption 14 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This picture is a synthesis of new high-resolution images downlinked from New Horizons. The broad icy plains have been nicknamed Sputnik Planum. This image is from a perspective above Pluto's equatorial area. Astronomers began downlinking a data dump from the space craft over Labor Day weekend, September 5 to 7. Hide Caption 15 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Scientists say that what looks like mountains could be huge blocks of frozen water suspended in frozen nitrogen. On the new photos, taken on July 14 and released on September 10, a pixel is 400 meters (440 yards). New Horizons' closest pass by Pluto took it about 50,000 miles from the surface. Hide Caption 16 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Pluto's landscape has lots of variety: plains, mountains, craters and what looks like they might be dunes.

The smallest details on the photos are about half a mile wide. The area with the craters is ancient, scientist say. The smooth frozen planes are relatively young. Hide Caption 17 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Just before its closest approach to Pluto on July 14, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft snapped this photo of Charon, Pluto's largest moon. The photo was shot at a distance of 290,000 miles away. Charon's north pole region is markedly dark. This photo was released on September 10. Hide Caption 18 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This new image of Pluto is stunning planetary scientists. It shows the small world's atmosphere, backlit by the sun. NASA says the image reveals layers of haze that are several times higher than predicted. The photo was taken by the New Horizons spacecraft seven hours after its closest approach to Pluto on July 14. New Horizons was about 1.25 million miles from Pluto at the time.

Hide Caption 19 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Images taken of Pluto's heart-shaped feature, informally named Tombaugh Regio, reveal a "vast, craterless plain that appears to be no more than 100 million years old," NASA said July 17. The frozen region "is possibly still being shaped by geologic processes." NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was launched in 2006 and traveled 3 billion miles to the dwarf planet. Hide Caption 20 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Close-up images of a region near Pluto's equator revealed a giant surprise: a range of youthful mountains. NASA released the image on July 15. Hide Caption 21 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Remarkable new details of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, are revealed in this image released on July 15. Hide Caption 22 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon The latest spectra analysis from New Horizons' Ralph instrument was released on July 15. It reveals an abundance of methane ice, but with striking differences from place to place across the frozen surface of Pluto.

Hide Caption 23 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon NASA team members and guests count down to the spacecraft's approach to Pluto on July 14. Hide Caption 24 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach. The spacecraft was 476,000 miles from Pluto's surface. Hide Caption 25 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon The colors in this image of Pluto and Charon are exaggerated to make it easy to see their different features. (These are not the actual colors of Pluto and Charon, and the two bodies aren't really that close together in space.) This image was created on July 13, one day before New Horizons was to make its closest approach to Pluto. Hide Caption 26 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This image of Pluto was captured by New Horizons on July 12. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles from Pluto at the time.

Hide Caption 27 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons snapped this photo of Charon on July 12. It reveals a system of chasms larger than the Grand Canyon. The spacecraft was 1.6 million miles away when the image was taken. Hide Caption 28 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons was about 3.7 million miles from Pluto and Charon when it took this image on July 8. Hide Caption 29 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Do you see a heart on Pluto? This image was taken on July 7 by New Horizons when it was about 5 million miles from the planet. Look to the lower right, and you'll see a large bright area -- about 1,200 miles across -- that resembles a heart. Hide Caption 30 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons took six black-and-white photos of Pluto and Charon between June 23 and 29. The images were combined with color data from another instrument on the space probe to create the images above.

The spacecraft was 15 million miles away when it started the sequence and 11 million miles when the last photo was taken. Hide Caption 31 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Pluto is shown here along with Charon in images taken on June 25 and 27. The image on the right shows a series of evenly spaced dark spots near Pluto's equator. Scientists hope to solve the puzzle as New Horizons gets closer to Pluto. Hide Caption 32 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons took a series of 13 images of Charon circling Pluto over the span of 6½ days in April. As the images were being taken, the spacecraft moved from about 69 million miles from Pluto to 64 million miles. Hide Caption 33 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Look carefully at the images above: They mark the first time New Horizons has photographed Pluto's smallest and faintest moons, Kerberos and Styx. The images were taken from April 25 to May 1.

Hide Caption 34 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons used its color imager to capture this image of Pluto and Charon on April 9. This was the first color image taken by a spacecraft approaching Pluto and Charon, according to NASA. The spacecraft was about 71 million miles away from Pluto when the photo was taken. Hide Caption 35 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon In August 2014, New Horizons crossed the orbit of Neptune, the last planet it would pass on its journey to Pluto. New Horizons took this photo of Neptune and its large moon Triton when it was about 2.45 billion miles from the planet -- more than 26 times the distance between the Earth and our sun. Hide Caption Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons captured this image of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io in early 2007. Hide Caption 37 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon On its way to Pluto, New Horizons snapped these photos of Jupiter's four large "Galilean" moons. From left is Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.

Hide Caption 38 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon A white arrow points to Pluto in this photo taken in September 2006 from New Horizons. The spacecraft was still about 2.6 billion miles from Pluto. Hide Caption 39 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon Pluto was discovered in 1930 but was only a speck of light in the best telescopes on Earth until February 2010, when NASA released this photo. It was created by combining several images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope -- each only a few pixels wide -- through a technique called dithering. NASA says it took four years and 20 computers operating continuously to create the image. Hide Caption 40 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon This was one of the best views we had of Pluto and its moon Charon before the New Horizons mission. The image was taken by the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope on February 21, 1994. Hide Caption 41 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon A Hubble Space Telescope image of Pluto and its moons.

Charon is the largest moon close to Pluto. The other four bright dots are smaller moons discovered in 2005, 2011 and 2012: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. Hide Caption 42 of 43 Photos: Pluto on the horizon New Horizons launched from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on January 19, 2006. The probe, about the size of a piano, weighed nearly 1,054 pounds at launch. It has seven instruments on board to take images and sample Pluto's atmosphere. After it completes its five-month study of Pluto, the spacecraft will keep going deeper into the Kuiper Belt. Hide Caption Pluto - Lowell Observatory Pluto Home » In-Depth » Pluto 2015 is the Year of Pluto NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been traveling for almost ten years and over three billion miles toward the outer reaches of the solar system. It is currently on the final leg of its journey to Pluto, which was discovered at Lowell Observatory by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. Thus, we have dubbed 2015 the Year of Pluto.

Throughout the year Lowell will present special programming to celebrate this monumental event and will incorporate the hashtag #YearOfPluto on social media. Our upcoming Year of Pluto events are listed below. Learn more about the discovery of Pluto here. Upcoming Year of Pluto events at Lowell Observatory Pluto at 85: From Discovery to New Horizons Exhibit Opening March 13 This new exhibit will answer all the questions you have about Pluto, from why we were searching for a planet, to what it means to be a “planet” and what we might find when we arrive. Featured Speaker Dr. Gerard van Belle – The Pluto Vote: One Astronomer’s Personal Story April 4 The 2006 vote on the planetary status of Pluto has had a long-lasting reverberation throughout astronomy. With an outcome that remains controversial both in the public eye and within the professional community, the debate on what to call this world remains a lively one. Dr. van Belle’s own accidental involvement in this question has its own amusing tall tale, which he will recount along the way to re-examining a question: What is a planet, and why do we care?

Pluto Discovery Walking Tour May 2 Follow in the footsteps of Clyde Tombaugh, visiting several sites at Lowell and in downtown Flagstaff where Tombaugh went the day he discovered Pluto. Lowell Observatory’s Annual Gala June 13 The Solar System: Pluto | The Institute for Creation Research The Solar System: Pluto Resources › Physical Sciences Resources › Astronomy In 1930, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered a faint point of light orbiting the sun beyond Neptune. The new world “Pluto” was considered the ninth planet for 76 years, but in 2006 the International Astronomical Union voted to reclassify Pluto as a “dwarf planet.” What prompted this change in nomenclature? The Rise and Fall of the Ninth Planet The discovery of Neptune in 1846 was a triumph of Newtonian physics.1 The planet was detected by its gravitational influence on the orbit of Uranus. This novel technique prompted astronomers to carefully monitor the orbits of Uranus and Neptune hoping that subtle deviations in their orbits might lead to new discoveries. By the end of the 19th century, some astronomers believed an additional planet was needed to explain slight discrepancies in the orbits of these planets.

In 1906 Percival Lowell began a systematic search for this undiscovered world he termed “Planet X.” He died before finding it.2 Clyde Tombaugh resumed the search at Lowell Observatory in 1929. He took photographs of various sections of the sky and then photographed the same sections days or weeks later. Since planets orbit the sun, while stars do not, Planet X would be in a different position on two photographic plates of a particular region of the sky taken on different nights. But of the thousands of stars in a typical photograph, how could he possibly notice the one that had moved? Tombaugh used a machine called a blink comparator. This device allows a view of two photographic plates in rapid succession. By shifting from one photograph to a nearly identical one taken some time later, the human brain is able to perceive any change. A planet will appear to jump back and forth when the plates are flipped, while the stars remain stationary. Tombaugh found Planet X (Pluto) on February 18, 1930, by “blinking” between two photographs taken a few days apart in January of the same year. Pluto was revealed by its own motion.

Before Pluto, our solar system was neatly divided into the four terrestrial planets that orbit close to the sun and the four gas giants that orbit farther out. This new planet broke the mold, being a small rocky/icy body at tremendous distance. Unlike any other planet, Pluto showed no discernable size in even the largest telescopes of the period. This meant that it had to be much smaller than Uranus or Neptune and no bigger than Earth. As technology grew, the estimated size of Pluto shrank. By the middle of the 20th century, Pluto was known to be no larger than Mars, and by the 1970s it was believed to be even smaller. Using modern telescopes, we now know that Pluto is only 1,430 miles in diameter—about 18 percent the diameter of Earth—and smaller than any of the other eight planets. It has less than 1 percent of the mass of Earth. Such a diminutive world is not nearly massive enough to affect the orbits of Neptune or Uranus in a measurable way. It now appears that there never was any discrepancy in the orbits of these planets. So, the discovery of Pluto was serendipitous.

The new estimate of its small size is one reason for Pluto’s demotion from planet-hood. But it’s not the only reason. In 1992, astronomers detected another object orbiting beyond Neptune. Designated “1992 QB1,” the object was a mere 100 miles in diameter—far too small for a planet. The following year, five similar objects were also discovered orbiting beyond Neptune. Over the next several years, dozens more of these distant masses were found, and we now know of hundreds. A few of them, such as Sedna and Makemake, are nearly as large as Pluto. With these discoveries, astronomers began to realize Pluto was not an unusual out-of-place planet but the largest member of a new class of objects—a trans-Neptunian object (TNO). As more TNOs were discovered, astronomers began to ask, “Should Pluto be reclassified?” For 70 years, school children had been taught that there were nine planets, but a new discovery was about to challenge old taxonomy.

In 2005, astronomers discovered a TNO that is larger and more massive than Pluto.3,4 Now named Eris, this world orbits the sun at twice the average distance of Pluto. But how should we classify this new world? It would not make sense to call it a TNO but not a planet since it is larger than the planet Pluto. Either Eris needed to be classified as the 10th planet, or Pluto would have to be demoted. Since Pluto and Eris are far more similar to the hundreds of other TNOs than they are to the (other) planets, the International Astronomical Union opted to revoke Pluto’s status as a planet rather than reclassify dozens of similar-size objects as planets.5,6,7 With this new classification system in place, the solar system returned to having only eight planets, as it did before 1930. Properties of Pluto Pluto is a small world composed of rock and various types of ice, including nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide. It has a tilt of 120 degrees and therefore rotates on its side like Uranus.

Pluto’s average distance from the sun is 3.6 billion miles, or 39 times Earth’s distance. On Pluto, the sun would appear over 1,500 times fainter than it does to us. The temperature of Pluto’s surface is -229°C (-380°F). Due to its extreme distance, Pluto takes 248 years to orbit the sun. The orbit of Pluto is inclined relative to the plane of the solar system by 17 degrees—far larger than the inclination of any planet.8 Also, its orbit has high eccentricity (the “squashed-ness” of the ellipse). Pluto is 1.79 billion miles closer to the sun at its closest approach (perihelion) than at its most distant point (aphelion). That’s a phenomenal difference! In fact, near perihelion Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune. This was the situation between 1979 and 1999 when Pluto was considered to be the eighth planet from the sun, and Neptune was the ninth. But for the remaining 228 years of its orbit, Pluto will be farther from the sun than Neptune.

It may seem that the two worlds might collide when Pluto crosses the orbit of Neptune. But their orbits are not in the same plane and never actually intersect. There is another reason why a collision could not occur. Pluto is in a 2:3 orbital resonance with Neptune. That is, Pluto orbits the sun twice for every three orbits of Neptune. Such a stable configuration guarantees that these two worlds can never be near the same place at the same time. Could this be a design-feature of the solar system? At the time this article was written we had no detailed images of Pluto because it has never been visited by spacecraft. Our best images are from the Hubble Space Telescope. But even Hubble cannot provide much detail on such a small, distant world. This situation should change drastically in July 2015 when the New Horizons spacecraft is scheduled to reach Pluto. Pluto has a thin atmosphere—sometimes. It consists primarily of nitrogen, methane, and carbon monoxide—the same composition as Pluto’s icy surface. Solar heating is sufficient to keep trace amounts of these substances in a gaseous state when Pluto is near perihelion. But as Pluto moves toward aphelion, its surface temperature will drop due to lack of sunlight.

Astronomers expect that at some point the atmosphere will “freeze out” and drop to the surface. There is high hope that New Horizons will reach Pluto before this happens. Pluto’s Moons Pluto has five known moons. Charon is the largest and was identified in 1978, appearing as a “bump” on an image of Pluto.9 More recently, Hubble Space Telescope images distinctly reveal the separation between Pluto and this moon. Charon is over half the size of Pluto in diameter. Pluto and Charon revolve around their common center of mass, which is in between these two worlds but closer to Pluto.10,11 Like all large moons, Charon is tidally locked—meaning it keeps the same side pointed toward Pluto as it revolves. Amazingly, Pluto is also tidally locked with Charon. The orbital period of Charon therefore exactly matches the rotation period of Pluto, which is 6.4 days. A person standing on one of these worlds would see the other one remain stationary in the sky as the sun and stars rise and set.12 Pluto’s other four known moons are all less than 100 miles in diameter.

Each of these was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope. All orbit in the same plane farther out than Charon and are named—in order of increasing distance from Pluto—Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra. Other TNOs Much less is known about other TNOs because they tend to be smaller than Pluto and are consequently harder to image. Eris alone is larger than Pluto, though only by about 1 percent. But Eris orbits 73 percent farther from the sun than Pluto, so images of this little world don’t reveal much detail. From tracking this dwarf planet, we know that Eris has a highly eccentric orbit that is inclined a whopping 44 degrees relative to the plane of the planets. The elliptical orbit brings Eris within 3.5 billion miles of the sun and out to a distance of over 9 billion miles. Spectroscopic studies suggest that the composition of Eris is similar to Pluto. We also know from Hubble images that Eris is orbited by a moon, Dysnomia. But this is about the limit of our knowledge of this little world. Plutinos and KBOs TNOs are further classified by their orbital characteristics.

Of particular interest is a type of TNO referred to as a plutino. A plutino has the same orbital period as Pluto and is consequentially also in a 2:3 resonance with Neptune. A surprisingly large percentage of TNOs are plutinos, possibly having been influenced by the gravitational pull of Neptune. Some astronomers prefer the term Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) to TNO. The two terms are essentially synonymous, but KBO has a secular origin. Since comets cannot last billions of years and since we still see comets, secularists have invented a hypothetical source to resupply short-period comets over billions of years: a Kuiper Belt. This belt was supposed to be a disk of trillions of comet-size objects orbiting beyond Neptune. Contrary to expectations, astronomers instead found a few hundred much larger icy objects beyond Neptune. TNOs are typically tens of thousands of times more massive than a comet nucleus and cannot therefore be a source of new comets. Secular astronomers believe that many trillions of comet-size TNOs exist and simply have not yet been detected. But this remains to be seen. Thus, though it is widely used, KBO is misleading terminology.

On the other hand, the term trans-Neptunian object is more objective and observationally driven. In any case, whatever we choose to call them, and however we decide to classify Pluto, these objects are fascinating and give us a small glimpse into the infinite creativity of our Lord. References See my article on Neptune in the March 2014 issue of Acts & Facts. Lowell founded an observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1894. He was famous for believing that he could see evidence of civilizations on Mars. Specifically, Lowell believed he could see canals that the Martians used to transport water across their planet and sketched many of these. Of course, modern technology confirms that no such canals exist. Lowell was sincere but mistaken. He searched for Planet X until his death in 1916. Newer estimates indicate that Eris is only slightly larger than Pluto. But the uncertainties are such that we cannot rule out the possibility that Eris may in fact be slightly smaller. The extreme distance to both of these worlds makes exact measurements impossible. Scientists Discover Tenth Planet . NASA News.

Posted on nasa.gov July 29, 2005, accessed January 15, 2014. This has inspired a new term in colloquial English: To be “plutoed” is to be demoted or devalued. The new word was voted the 2006 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. Not everyone was happy with this decision. But we would do well to remember that this is merely a matter of classification. Pluto is exactly the same world today as it was before 2006 or as it was before its discovery in 1930. It’s just a matter of nomenclature. Perhaps as a tribute to Pluto’s previous status, the IAU designated a new category “dwarf planet” that includes Pluto, as well as Eris and the largest asteroid Ceres. This new term is reserved for masses smaller than planets that orbit the sun directly and have sufficient gravity to pull themselves into a spherical shape. Pluto is both a TNO and a dwarf planet. So is Eris. This is not the first time in history that the number of planets in our solar system has been reduced by reclassification.

In the early 1800s, astronomers discovered several small “planets” orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. As more of these tiny worlds were discovered, it made more sense to classify them as a new type of object—an asteroid or “minor planet.” Nonetheless, for nearly 50 years the first asteroids were considered to be “planets” until astronomers gradually began reserving that term for only the largest eight planets. The plane of the solar system, the ecliptic, is defined as the plane of Earth’s orbit around the sun. However, the orbits of the other planets are all essentially in this plane as well. Mercury’s orbital plane is offset from the ecliptic by 7 degrees, and Venus is offset by 3.4 degrees. All the other planets orbit within 3 degrees of the ecliptic. From a secular standpoint, it is surprising that the planets deviate at all from a common plane if they all developed from the same nebular disk. Charon is pronounced “kair–uhn” or less commonly “shair–uhn.” The center of mass is the “balance point” of a mass or system of masses. Imagine that Pluto and Charon were placed on a large seesaw.

In order for the seesaw to be level, Pluto would have to be much closer to the pivot point than Charon. When the seesaw is balanced and level, the pivot point would be the center of mass of the Pluto-Charon system. For this reason, some astronomers have suggested that Pluto and Charon should be considered a double-dwarf planet rather than a dwarf planet and moon. This is the case unless the person is standing on the opposite side of Pluto or Charon. In the latter case, the person would never see the other world. Image credit: Artistic conception by C. M. Handler * Dr. Lisle is Director of Physical Sciences at the Institute for Creation Research and received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado. Cite this article: Jason Lisle, Ph.D. 2014. The Solar System: Pluto . Acts & Facts. 43 (4). When Was the Dwarf Planet Pluto Discovered? By Jennifer Rosenberg Updated March 03, 2016. On February 18, 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto.

For over seven decades, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of our solar system. The Discovery It was American astronomer Percival Lowell who first thought there might be another planet somewhere near Neptune and Uranus. Lowell had noticed that the gravitational pull of something large was affecting the orbits of those two planets. However, despite looking for what he called "Planet X" from 1905 until his death in 1916, Lowell never found it. Thirteen years later, the Lowell Observatory (founded in 1894 by Percival Lowell) decided to recommence Lowell's search for Planet X. They had a more powerful, 13-inch telescope built for this sole purpose. The Observatory then hired 23-year-old Clyde W. Tombaugh to use Lowell's predictions and the new telescope to search the skies for a new planet. It took a year of detailed, painstaking work, but Tombaugh did find Planet X. continue reading below our video 4 Tips for Improving Test Performance The discovery occurred on February 18, 1930 while Tombaugh was carefully examining a set of photographic plates created by the telescope.

Despite Planet X being discovered on February 18, 1930, the Lowell Observatory was not quite ready to announce this huge discovery until more research could be done. After a few weeks, it was confirmed that Tombaugh's discovery was indeed a new planet. On what would have been Percival Lowell's 75th birthday, March 13, 1930, the Observatory publicly announced to the world that a new planet had been discovered. Pluto the Planet Once discovered, Planet X needed a name. Everyone had an opinion. However, the name Pluto was chosen on March 24, 1930 after 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England suggested the name "Pluto." The name denotes both the assumed unfavorable surface conditions (as Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld) and also honors Percival Lowell, as Lowell's initials make up the first two letters of the planet's name. At the time of its discovery, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in the solar system. Pluto was also the smallest planet, being less than half the size of Mercury and two-thirds the size of Earth's moon. Usually, Pluto is the planet farthest from the sun.

This great distance from the sun makes Pluto very inhospitable; it's surface is expected to be made up of mostly ice and rock and it takes Pluto 248 years just to make one orbit around the sun. Pluto Loses Its Planet Status As the decades passed and astronomers learned more about Pluto, many questioned whether Pluto could really be considered a full-fledged planet. Pluto's status was questioned in part because it was by far the smallest of the planets. Plus, Pluto's moon (Charon, named after Charon of the underworld , discovered in 1978) is incredibly large in comparison. Pluto's eccentric orbit also concerned astronomers; Pluto was the only planet whose orbit actually crossed that of another planet (sometimes Pluto crosses Neptune's orbit). When bigger and better telescopes began to discover other large bodies beyond Neptune in the 1990s, and especially when another large body was discovered in 2003 that rivaled the size of Pluto, Pluto's planet status became seriously questioned . In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially created a definition of what makes a planet; Pluto did not meet all the criteria.

Pluto was then downgraded from a "planet" to a "dwarf planet." Tombaugh discovered Pluto, co-founded church | UU World Magazine Tombaugh discovered Pluto, co-founded church He found a planet and founded a church Kimberly French October 3, 2005 UU World Magazine Fall 2005 , published by the Unitarian Universalist Association Looking back UU Identity At just 24 years old, a sharp-eyed observatory assistant made astronomical news 75 years ago at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered what some astronomers had declared impossible, and others had been searching for, for a quarter century—a ninth planet in our solar system, later named Pluto. Two decades earlier the observatory’s founding director, Percival Lowell, had predicted a planet beyond Neptune, but his search was cut short by his death in 1916.

When Tombaugh arrived at the observatory in January 1929, his job was to lead tours, throw giant logs in the furnace, clear the frequent heavy snows from the observatory’s canvas dome—and renew the search for Lowell’s “Planet X.” Tombaugh’s dream as a farm boy in Burdett, Kansas, had been to go to college and become a professor. From age 12, he had spent every clear night scanning the skies with a borrowed telescope and had read every astronomy book he could find. When his passion required a more powerful telescope, he built his own, grinding the mirrors himself. Three years after high school graduation, discouraged by crop failures, Tombaugh decided to look for a job, maybe on the railroad. At the same time, he sent meticulous drawings he had made of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory for an opinion. Impressed, the director offered him a trial assistantship. Tombaugh bought a one-way train ticket to Arizona. The astronomy work was tedious. Tombaugh worked alone through each night in the unheated, high-altitude dome, taking long-exposure photographs of the outer solar system.

Once he had two clear photos within a few days of each other, he used a machine called a blink comparator that rapidly alternated them. Stars would appear stationary. But anything that orbited—asteroids, comets, planets—would seem to jump, or blink. Each photo could have between 50,000 and 400,000 dots of light, and every inch had to be scrutinized. He rested his eyes every twenty minutes and switched to other tasks after an hour. Tombaugh dreaded the Milky Way, writing in his book Out of the Darkness, “It was like plunging into a jungle.” His diligence and young, sharp eyes paid off. On February 18, 1930, he found a tiny dot, orbiting very close to Lowell’s prediction, on a pair of photos he had taken in January. After just thirteen months of work, Tombaugh’s discovery rocked the astronomical and academic world. A year later Tombaugh entered the University of Kansas on a four-year scholarship—genuinely surprised when professors there refused to let the planet discoverer enroll in introductory astronomy.

This year also marks the fiftieth year since Clyde and his wife, Patsy, helped found the Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Cruces, New Mexico. While at university, the couple had visited Unitarian churches in Kansas. When Clyde joined New Mexico State University in 1955 to found its now-renowned astronomy program, they joined students interested in starting a church. Patsy, the only living charter member still at the church—Clyde died in 1997—says her husband was known for his puns: When the clock at the back of the church stopped working one Sunday morning, he quipped, “I’m so sorry that clock had such an untimely death.” She still has the telescope he made as a boy and a two-story-high one he constructed in their back yard. Tombaugh will always be best known for the earthshaking discovery he made before his illustrious career had even begun. He went on to develop innovations in telescopic instruments and to photograph two-thirds of the sky—discovering six star clusters, two comets, hundreds of asteroids, several dozen clusters of galaxies, one supercluster, and a rare exploding nova.

Few astronomers have seen the sky in such detail. As Tombaugh liked to say, “I’ve really had a tour of the heavens.” Related Stories Ashes of Kansan who discovered Pluto to pass near planet | The Wichita Eagle July 13, 2015 8:23 PM Ashes of Kansan who discovered Pluto to pass near planet This 1990 file photo shows Clyde Tombaugh in New York. On Tuesday, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, carrying a small canister with his ashes, is scheduled to pass within 7,800 miles of Pluto, which he discovered 85 years ago. Will Yurman File photo In 1931, Clyde Tombaugh poses with the telescope through which he discovered Pluto at the Lowell Observatory on Observatory Hill in Flagstaff, Ariz. File photo An aluminum canister containing the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the American astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, will be attached to NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. Courtesy of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory This July 11, 2015, image shows Pluto from the New Horizons spacecraft.

New Horizons has traveled 3 billion miles over 9½ years to get to the historic point. Courtesy of NASA 1 of 4 Order Reprint of this Story Clyde Tombaugh is making history again. The Kansan who discovered Pluto before he even had a college degree will become the first human on Tuesday to have his remains carried past the tiny planet – 18 years after his death and 85 years after his discovery. For the past 9 1/2 years, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been speeding across the solar system on a 3-billion-mile journey toward Pluto. The Washington Post on Monday called the journey “the equivalent of a golfer on the East Coast hitting a ball across the continent and making a hole-in-one in Los Angeles.” So declared the project manager, Glen Fountain, at a news briefing Monday at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the home of the New Horizons mission. Already, there have been new discoveries on this journey – photos from the mission show linear features that scientists said might be cliffs, as well as what appears to be an impact crater. Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, shows a gash in the surface larger than the Earth’s Grand Canyon.

It was enough on Monday to make Wichitan Ruth Tombaugh Martinez proud again of her famous uncle. “It is exciting because it is opening a lot of new worlds in space we haven’t known about,” Martinez said. “Pluto was the door that opened up New Horizons in space. He would have been so excited.” Martinez and her brother, Glenn Tombaugh, pastor at Wichita’s Mount Vernon United Methodist Church, traveled Monday to Burdett to celebrate at the town’s senior center. Burdett, where Clyde Tombaugh grew up, is about 50 miles southwest of Great Bend. Journey to Pluto Pluto is the largest among the dwarf planets in a solar system known as the Kuiper Belt. “The mission is a fly-by so there will be no real orbit,” says Bruce Twarog, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. “The satellite will be taking data as it flies past and beyond Pluto, but it is a nice tribute to Clyde, promoting the notion that Pluto is a significant object.” The satellite carries some of the ashes of Tombaugh. The NASA container with his ashes carries an inscription with a small typo: “Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W.

Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system’s ‘third zone.’ ” One Pluto Twitter fan dryly tweeted : “Spelling mistake on #PlutoFlyby – ‘interned’ vs ‘interred’ – sets new record for human error farthest from Earth.” The inscription also describes Tombaugh as “Adelle and Muron’s boy, Patricia’s husband, Annette and Alden’s father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend.” Tombaugh’s legacy Tombaugh’s fascination with astronomy landed him at Arizona’s Lowell Observatory in the 1920s, shoveling snow from a telescope dome and feeding coal into stoves. The job had the added benefit of photographing the night sky in search of a mysterious Planet X that the observatory’s founder, Percival Lowell, had plotted before he died in 1916. Because of his father’s love of the night sky, Tombaugh developed an affinity for astronomy. When the family’s tiny store-bought telescope proved inadequate, a teenage Tombaugh began grinding mirrors and constructing his own.

That earned him the nickname “Comet Clyde.” Born in 1906 on an Illinois farm, Tombaugh moved with his family to rural Pawnee County as a teenager. In Kansas, he was fascinated by the night sky and made notes and drawings of his findings – sending some to Lowell Observatory. Before he received formal training, Tombaugh was hired as a junior astronomer at the observatory, where he often hunched over the observatory’s telescope in freezing temperatures and exposed film until the wee hours. His discovery process was methodical: Examining hundreds of photos taken of the same portion of the sky crowded with about 300,000 stars, Tombaugh explained later to reporters, he looked for tiny dots that differed slightly on any two photos. On Feb. 18, 1930, Tombaugh, then 24, spotted a small shift in the position of an object in the plates. That shift showed what would become known as Pluto. After Pluto’s discovery, Tombaugh earned a full scholarship at the University of Kansas, where he received both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

Tombaugh later founded the research astronomy department at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, regarded as one of the nation’s best. “When you look at the history of Tombaugh and his desire to receive an education, he didn’t let a little thing like discovering a planet step in his way,” said Mike Reid, director of the KU History Project. “It was remarkable that he did that and came up here and enrolled in KU. He is the only freshman that enrolled at KU that had already discovered a planet. I have heard stories that faculty members worried about having him in class because he already knew so much about astronomy.” Contributing: The Washington Post Reach Beccy Tanner at 316-268-6336 or btanner@wichitaeagle.com . Follow her on Twitter: @beccytanner . This Tuesday, July 14, 2015, image provided by NASA on Wednesday shows Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, made by the New Horizons spacecraft. AP This July 13, 2015 image provided by NASA shows Pluto, seen from the New Horizons spacecraft.

The United States is now the only nation to visit every single planet in the solar system. Pluto was No. 9 in the lineup when New Horizons departed Cape Canaveral, Fla, on Jan. 19, 2006 NASA AP Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto on Tuesday. Bill Ingalls AP Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto on Tuesday.

Bill Ingalls AP Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto on Tuesday. Bill Ingalls AP Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto on Tuesday. Bill Ingalls AP Members of the New Horizons science team react to seeing the spacecraft's last and sharpest image of Pluto before closest approach later in the day, Tuesday, July 14, 2015, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was on track to zoom within 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) of Pluto on Tuesday. Bill Ingalls AP Alice Bowman New Horizons mission operations manager, left, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md cross their fingers as they talk about the upcoming flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft Monday, July 13, 2015 in the in the Mission Operations Center at APL in Laurel, Md. Based on everything NASA knows, New Horizons was straight on course for the historic encounter, sweeping within 7,800 miles of Pluto at 31,000 mph. But official confirmation won't come until Tuesday night, 13 nerve-racking hours later. NASA/Bill Ingalls AP Jim Green, NASA Planetary Science Division director, center, and other New Horizons team members count down to the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The moment of closest approach for the New Horizons spacecraft came around 7:49 a.m.

EDT Tuesday, culminating an epic journey from planet Earth that spanned an incredible 3 billion miles and 9½ years. Bill Ingalls AP Guest and New Horizons team members count down to the spacecraft's closest approach to Pluto, Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. The moment of closest approach for the New Horizons spacecraft came around 7:49 a.m. EDT Tuesday, culminating an epic journey from planet Earth that spanned an incredible 3 billion miles and 9½ years. Bill Ingalls AP In this photo provided by NASA, New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colo., left, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Director Ralph Semmel, center, and New Horizons Co-Investigator Will Grundy of the Lowell Observatory hold a print of a U.S. stamp with their suggested update since the New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md. on Tuesday, July 14, 2015.

Bill Ingalls AP 1 of 11

Question: To within one year either way, in which year was Pluto discovered by Clyde Tombaugh?
Answer: 1930