![]() The Search Continues![]() Enter Clyde Tombaugh, a 22-year old raised on an Illinois farm. As an amateur astronomer, he had built three telescopes, using parts from farm machinery, and had sent sketches of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn to the Lowell Observatory for appraisal. Even though Tombaugh had not attended college or had formal training, Vesto Slipher was impressed enough to invite him out for a three-month trial period, which stretched to a thirteen year career at the Lowell Observatory. Tombaugh arrived in Flagstaff in January, 1929, a month before assembly of the new telescope was completed. By April, the search for Planet X was underway again, but Tombaugh found the other researchers too busy with their projects to give him guidance. He was on his own, and soon set about fixing problems with the clock drive of the telescope and making crucial improvements in the photographic procedure. By September, Tombaugh decided that Lowell's predictions had little use, and that he would conduct a thorough search of the sky. In January, he exposed two plates of an area in the constellation Gemini. It was a few weeks before he could check them, and on February 18, 1930, Tombaugh was comparing the two plates when he saw a star shifting position. It was fainter than expected, but he knew he had finally found Planet X.
A Name for Planet X![]() The name Pluto was first suggested by Venetia Burney, an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. She had been studying Greek and Roman mythology in school, and felt that the planet, being far from the Sun in its own dark world, should be named after the Greek god of the underworld. The observatory officially proposed the name Pluto on May 1, 1930, with the symbol being PL, the first two letters of Pluto and coincidentally the initials of Percival Lowell.
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