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Credit & Copyright:
J. Kelly Beatty
Explanation:
Astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, died on January 17th.
Inspiring many during his long and exceptional career,
he had been living in Las Cruces, New Mexico
with his wife of 60 years, Patsy.
Today would have been his 91st
birthday.
He is pictured above in 1995 in his backyard
with a telescope he knew well -
a 9 inch Newtonian reflector he built in 1927 with discarded
farm machinery and car parts.
Using this telescope under the dark night skies of
Western Kansas, he
made drawings of Mars and Jupiter and submitted them to
Lowell Observatory in 1928.
Hired to work at Lowell in 1929, Tombaugh
embarked on a systematic photographic search
for the long sought
Planet X with a newly constructed
13 inch astrograph.
In 1930 Tombaugh triumphed in
his struggle to find the 9th planet,
discovering faint and distant Pluto orbiting
at the edge
of our Solar System.
Founding father of
New Mexico State University's Astronomy Department,
he retired as professor emeritus in 1973 but continued to
tour as a lecturer and promoter until failing health
prevented it.
Always an active stargazer, he was asked by the Smithsonian if they
could have the telescope he used to make his 1928
drawings. His response: "I told them I was still using it."
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day