Who Discovered Pluto?
QUICK ANSWER
Pluto was discovered by American astronomer Clyde Tombaugh on February 18, 1930, at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Tombaugh found Pluto while systematically comparing photographs of the night sky. The name Pluto was suggested by an 11-year-old English schoolgirl named Venetia Burney.
Pluto has one of the more charming discovery stories in astronomy. A 23-year-old farm boy turned amateur astronomer found it after months of comparing photographic plates. An 11-year-old English schoolgirl came up with the name. The whole thing happened during the Great Depression and made international headlines.
Who found Pluto?
Clyde Tombaugh, on February 18, 1930. According to NASA, Tombaugh was a 23-year-old amateur astronomer from Kansas working at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He had been hired specifically to search for a hypothetical Planet X, predicted by Percival Lowell to exist beyond Neptune based on perceived irregularities in Neptune's orbit. Tombaugh used a blink comparator, a device that rapidly switches between two photographs of the same area of sky, looking for objects that had moved. He found Pluto on his eighth month of searching.
Why was Pluto being looked for?
Because of perceived irregularities in Neptune's orbit. In the early 1900s, astronomers including Percival Lowell believed Neptune's orbit suggested another planet beyond it. Lowell's calculations were later shown to be wrong; Pluto isn't massive enough to affect Neptune's orbit, and the perceived irregularities turned out to be measurement errors. So Tombaugh found Pluto, but in the region where Lowell had predicted a much larger planet. The discovery was partly accidental, since Pluto being there happened to coincide with the prediction by sheer luck.
How did Pluto get its name?
From an 11-year-old English schoolgirl. Venetia Burney, then 11 years old, suggested the name Pluto over breakfast with her grandfather after he read about the new planet in the newspaper. Her grandfather, who knew an Oxford astronomer, passed the suggestion along. Pluto fit the pattern of naming planets after Roman gods (Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld), and the first two letters echoed Percival Lowell's initials. The suggestion was officially adopted in May 1930. Venetia Burney lived until 2009, long enough to see Pluto's classification change.
Has anyone visited Pluto?
Once, in 2015. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made the only close flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015, after a nearly 10-year journey from Earth. New Horizons provided the first detailed images of Pluto's surface, including the now-famous heart-shaped region (Tombaugh Regio, named after the discoverer). The mission revealed Pluto as a far more geologically complex world than expected: ice mountains, possible cryovolcanoes, and signs of ongoing surface activity. New Horizons continues to explore the Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto.
Pluto was discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 after months of systematically scanning photographs of the night sky. The name came from an 11-year-old English schoolgirl. New Horizons later gave Pluto its only spacecraft visit in 2015, revealing it as a surprisingly active and geologically complex world. The discovery story spans nearly a century, from a Kansas farm boy with a telescope to a high-tech mission past the edge of the solar system.
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