Clyde+Tombaugh

Clyde Tombaugh


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Clyde Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois in 1906. He moved to Western Kansas during high school. Shortly after his move a hailstorm destroyed his family’s crops. This frustrated his aspirations to go to college. He had always been interested in astronomy and began his studies early. When he was twenty he built his first telescope. Throughout the next two years he continued to draw out designs for lenses and mirrors and created two more telescopes. After feeling that they were a success, he used them to draw out figures of the planets Mars and Jupiter and sent them to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ. His hard work paid off and he was offered a Job at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff AZ. It was a bold move for the young astronomer.1 "After spending 28 hours in a chair car on the Santa Fe, I arrived at Flagstaff in the early afternoon of 15 January, 1929. Dr. Slipher met me at the depot and drove me up Mars Hill. The yellow pine forest was in stark contrast to the treeless plains of Western Kansas. I was rather unnerved by it all, everybody were strangers, 1,000 miles from home, and not enough money in my wallet for a return ticket home . . . "2 It was at Lowell Observatory that he made the discovery of Pluto. With his job success, he was able to live out his dream of going to college. He obtained degrees from University of Kansas and Arizona State University. After working at the Lowell Observatory, he went on to become the chief of the Optical Measurement Branch at White Sands Missile Range. In his later years in life he gave lectures in Canada and the United Stated to raise money for New Mexico State University Tombaugh scholarship fund that was for post-doctoral students studying astronomy. He died at the age of 90 in his home in Las Cruces still passionate about astronomy. 3 


 * What event inspired you in this field as a young person?**

Clyde Tombaugh: "I was interested in eclipses when they occurred, things like that. Later, my uncle and my father invested in a Sears Roebuck better grade telescope which I used thousands of times to look at objects in the sky I read about. That was always a thrill to find them in the sky." 4

What started you looking for this Planet X?
"Percival Lowell interpreted some of what they call residuals -- slight irregularities in the orbit of Uranus and Neptune -- as indicative of a mass out there as yet unseen. Like the case of Neptune being discovered mathematically before it was seen. These residuals were so small that it was questionable whether they were real or not, but they were the best he had. He predicted that there was a planet out there about seven times more massive than the earth, beyond the orbit of Neptune. Of course, Pluto does not have that much mass." 5

Pluto
Tombaugh is most famous for his discovery of Pluto. In his work for the Lowell Observatory he was given the job to search for Planet X predicted to exist by [|Percival Lowell] that lay beyond Neptune. Uranus' orbit fit fairly well into Newton's laws yet there still seemed to be problems. Astronomers predicted that there had to be another planet beyond Neptune that was interfering with the orbit. The planet had been through to exist since 1905 but had never been discovered. Percival Lowell began researching the planet which he called Planet X. Unfortunately he died in November of 1916 without ever discovering the planet. After some legal battles, Tombaugh re-instated the search. He came across Pluto on February 18, 1930 by using a thirteen inch astrograph to take pictures of one section of the sky for several nights. He compared the images using a blink comparator. In looking at the images he kept a few things in mind; a planet would shift in position throughout the images whereas a star would stay stationary. He noticed that there was something shifting throughout the images and determined it to be another planet. The planet was named Pluto for several reasons. It was suggested by an 11-year-old girl. It was accepted as the official name of the planet because it is named after the Roman God of the underworld. Also, the first two letters, PL, are the initials of Percival Lowell, the man who predicted that the planet exists. 6



After nearly a year of searching, Tombaugh discovered Pluto. Pluto is composed of mostly rock and ice and is fairly small in size. It is only one-fifth of the mass of Earth’s moon. It travels around the Sun in an elliptical orbit and spins on its axis. It is mainly brown and is covered with a layer of frozen methane gas. It is located beyond Neptune and is part of the [|Kupier Belt]. Due to its small size and irregular orbit it began to be seen as more similar to Kuiper's Belt objects rather than a plant. It was considered a planet from 1930 until 2006 when the International Astronomical Union actually defined the term “planet”. This excluded Pluto from the definition of a planet and is now considered a “dwarf planet”. 7

Other Discoveries
Asteroids:

Designation Discovery Date
2839 Annette: October 5, 1929 2941 Alden: December 24, 1930 3310 Patsy: October 9, 1931 3583 Burdett: October 5, 1929 3754 Kathleen: March 16, 1931 3775 Ellenbeth: October 6, 1931 3824 Brendalee: October 5, 1929 4510 Shawna: December 13, 1930 4755 Nicky: October 6, 1931 5701 Baltuck: November 3, 1929 (6618) 1936 SO: September 16, 1936 (7101) 1930 UX: October 17, 1930 (7150) 1929 TD: October 11, 1929 (8778) 1931 TD: October 10, 1931 **8

Tombaugh discovered hundreds of, two comets. He also found new star clusters, clusters of galaxies which included one super cluster. He also designed many telescopes and equipment including super camera called the IGOR (Intercept Ground Optical Recorder) which remained untouched for thirty years. 9




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