Pluto: the Kansas Connection

We got a rare look at Pluto this week as NASA's New Horizons spacecraft did a historic fly-by of the dwarf planet. I'm Kay McIntyre, and today on KPR presents We Explore Pluto, and its Kansas connection, Burdett native Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the tiny planet back in 1930. We'll look at the life of Pluto from its discovery to its declassification from planet to dwarf planet in 2006 to this week's up close photographs. We'll hear about Clyde Tombaugh and how he got involved in the search for Planet X, here a song by folksinger Christine Lavin, and even hear a Pluto-themed sketch by comedy troupe right between the ears. But first,

Barbara Anthony Torrag is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. Barbara, nice to see you again. Before we talk about this week's fly-by of Pluto, let's back up a little. What did we know about Pluto before this week? Well, since its discovery in 1930, it was pretty quickly realized that Pluto was a little on the small side compared to the other planets in the outer part of the solar system. And that was the situation until the late 1970s when a moon was discovered. And that was kind of an interesting feature, but more than just being interesting, it allowed us to work out more detail about Pluto's mass. And eventually, it's the sizes, the diameters of both Pluto and its moon care on. And that was the situation until the century when the Hubble Space Telescope began to get better and better images of the Pluto system and an additional four moons were discovered. We knew that Pluto was really cold. I knew that

it was very small, a little about twice the size of its moon, but that the two of them are locked in an extraordinarily intimate relationship that we call the binary planet. Well, when we were calling it a planet, they're locked face to face. They orbit each other without spinning with respect to each other. And that time period is about six and a half days. And then it's other three moons? Four, I think. And I have not heard of any additional moons have been spotted in the flyby pictures that might take a little longer. But they're very small, there are tens of miles across. So what type of images had we seen of Pluto before the New Horizons photographs started coming in? The best available were from the Hubble Space Telescope, which of course is in Earth orbit, so a long way away. Okay. Now, talk to me about the New Horizons spacecraft and its mission. It's taken nine years to get to Pluto. What's it been doing along the way?

It's been in hibernation for some of the time. It was brought out of hibernation when it was close to Jupiter a few years ago and got some stunning pictures of the Jupiter system. It needed to go by Jupiter. That was part of the reason that launch in early 2006 was so important. It needed a little bit of an extra kick from Jupiter's gravity. Over the last couple of months, New Horizons has been refining its approach quite literally because there were concerns that with four moons, maybe there were more, maybe there were more particles, even a tiny particle at the speed the spacecraft was traveling would be potentially catastrophic. So over the last several months, year and a half really, I think they were examining images as they became available and refining the approach path. And it eventually was decided that they had worried a little more than they needed to about the risk. But I was personally extremely relieved the other night when the phone home signal arrived safely. Okay, so the photograph started coming in on Tuesday and I

realized these photographs will be studied for years and years. But your initial impressions, what do we see in Pluto? A planetary surface and caron, like nobody has ever seen before, they are like nothing else we have seen in the solar system. The biggest shocks and the images that we've seen are low resolution versions will eventually get even better ones, but they are versions of the best pictures that will be available. The surfaces are less beat up and more variegated than I ever would have expected. And the biggest shock was announced yesterday that there's evidence that Pluto's surface has undergone some kind of geological transformation in the last hundred million years. And there is a lot of head scratching going on right now. How on Earth could that be? I'm going to stop right there. What do you mean by a geological transformation? The surface looks like it has been reshaped within the last few hundred million years.

The mountains look new. Good question. We need a source of heat and energy and we know there's no big planet nearby stressing either Pluto or its moon. So that is the $64,000 question today, I think. What process has produced the geological freshness that we see evidence on Pluto and Caron? Other reactions on photographs. The colors, they're just gorgeous. Pluto, who knew it was kind of orangey like that? People have, there are a lot of annotated versions of them, but the heart feature, which is apparently two pretty distinct regions from the spectroscopic evidence, it's been stunning. And that heart region, which so many of us have seen in the photographs of Pluto, I understand that that is being named in honor of Clyde Tomba. I'm sure that's proposed eventually. And of course, this is this relates back to your comment about the demotion 2006.

Astronomers can propose names for features of objects in the solar system, even craters and regions. The ultimate decision is made by an international body, the international astronomical union, but that's a suggestion that I could imagine being accepted by the IAEO wouldn't finally get around to deciding. I'm just curious, what, what do you think that heart is? Some of it looks like maybe ices, the equivalent of nitrogen and methane ice maybe in glacier period. Some of it may be material that looks smooth because it has been recently reshaped somehow by these different processes. It's not as striking as the mountains reasonably nearby, but I'm not a geologist so or a planetologist. The new horizon spacecraft was also able to capture incredible photographs of Pluto's moon. What, what do they tell you? There's a giant rift

across the surface of Karen. It looks like some of the huge rift valleys on Mars, so that's something where the surface expanded and split for whatever reason. I don't know how long ago that might have been. There are more craters on Karen than on Pluto, which is sort of expected because Karen has no atmosphere that I know of or that has, I don't think that's been changed in the last few days. So it should be beat up a little bit, but actually it was less scarred also than I would have expected something in the outer part of the solar system. Now, why would you expect more of a beat up surface? The solar system is a really violent place and you look at the surface of mercury or the far side of the moon. If you don't have an atmosphere to protect you, your app to receive a lot of scars. And unless you have an active geological process of some kind to reshape things, the way Earth does and the way some of the other planets may have in the past, you're going to show a lot of rough terrain. Now,

while photographs continue to come in over the next couple days, or have we kind of seen what we're going to see from Pluto? I think there will be another press release tomorrow and four of few more days. There's going to be a period of six or eight weeks when some of the non-image data gets transferred back. And then there will be 16 months of data download at the fullest resolution. It's very slow transfer. The little spacecraft is a long, long ways away. So every little bit of information has to be transmitted fairly slowly to get the highest fidelity that the data deserves. When you say non-image data, what kind of data would that be? Well, some of the on their instruments, we've seen images from the two cameras and also some from the spectrograph, but there's also a radio experiment. There's two charge particle experiments. And there's a student designed experiment, a dust counter. And I haven't seen any results from that. It was designed by

students at the University of Colorado Boulder. The New Horizons spacecraft is carrying in addition to all this equipment. They've got some fairly sentimental cargo aboard. Can you tell me about that? I think that when Alan Stern was here in 2006, just days after the launch of the spacecraft, we were celebrating Clyde Dumbo's 100th birthday. And he announced then that some of Dr. Dumbo's ashes were on the spacecraft and on their way to the Pluto system, which I thought was really cool. There is an additional small cargo, a CD of over 400,000 names of people who wanted to be part of the encounter. So there are 430,000 names of people speeding out of this solar system, as we speak. Is your name among them? It isn't. I missed the email out of the memo. In addition to Clyde Tomba, who attended the University of Kansas,

I understand there's another KU connection. There's another KU connection, and that is a LUM David Thullen, who is a Kansas and also. And from a family of KU alumni, Dave got a degree in I think 1978. And he has worked on solar system bodies. He's currently working on some of the Kuiper Belt objects, which may or may not be part of the future story of New Horizons. But in the 80s and 90s, Dave was one of the lead people studying Pluto and its moon as they got in front of each other and occulted each other and eclipsed each other. And we learned an awful lot about their masses and sizes then. So Dave really supplied a lot of the information that we had going into this encounter. What happens next for New Horizons? Now that it's done with its Pluto part of the mission, where does it go? Well, it's going to go out into the the belt of hundreds of thousands of objects that we know so very little about. Is this the Kuiper Belt? Okay. The question is not

whether it's going to keep going is going is whether we are going to continue to devote resources to track and guide the mission. And I know that the people on the New Horizons team have selected an object and they are going to propose and are probably arguing very very strongly this week. Well, the world's attention is on this mission to get that funding and tracking. It sounds likely to me that now administrators have been very visible in all the press this week. And this is something that they've got many, many reasons to be very proud of. So I think that would be another five or so years before that target would be reached. Barbara, as an astronomer yourself, what's your reaction to the photographs that are coming in of Pluto? And what would you like to know that you didn't know a week ago? I would like to know how this is going to play out as an origin story because

we're all telling origin stories. Pluto has been assigned various origin stories. One of which is that it was just a leftover from the formation of another planet, system Neptune, that it was very much like Triton. Well, it doesn't look anything like Triton. Pluto and Caron seem to have a history of their own that I hope we can decipher. And I hear people referring to it more and more as a planet or a world. And this terminology, it was a big story and I don't really want to go backwards on it, but clearly nature kind of supersedes our terminological boundaries at times like this. Again, I've been visiting with Dr. Barbara Anthony Toreg. She teaches physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas. Barbara, thanks for coming in today. It's been a pleasure. Okay. Yeah, come on in. You wanted to see me boss? Yeah, yeah, I do. Come on in.

Okay. Have a seat. Sure, sure. All right. Now, exactly how long have you been with the solar system, Pluto? Well, since 1930. Well, so in cosmic terms, it kind of makes you the new kid on the block, aren't you? Well, look, I mean, some of the guys have been with us a really long time, like Mars, for example. We don't even know when he started. Yes, sure, I know that. I mean, he's been around so long the universe actually makes sense to him. Yes, sir, but see, I think quality of performance is

just as important as Pluto. This is one of the hardest things a boss has to do. What, what? I've decided to, well, downsize the universe a little bit. Downsize? What do you mean? It's nothing, it's nothing personal. It's just, it's business. Oh, last hired first fired, huh? Now, LC here, as we, Pluto, I didn't say. What about those other losers? Like, like Jupiter? He's just a big, old ball of gas. Well, now Jupiter. I mean, is he out there on the edge of the known galaxy freezing his ass off? I don't think so. Look, you've got the wrong idea. It's dark out there. You know how far I am from the sun? 3.6 billion. It's 3.6 billion. Freakin' miles, buddy. That's right. Takes me 250 years just to circle the sun one time. Well, your orbit is just a little bit eccentric. Yeah, like I'm the only one that has a problem with that? How about Neptune? Half the time he's

farther out there than I am. Well, that's your fault, Pluto. You're the one with the wobbly orbit. Oh, all right. We all know about my wobbly orbit. Look, sir, you can't do this to me. You can't fire me. Wait, no, I didn't say anything about firing. You're not fired. You're just being reclassified. What? As what? The dwarf. A dwarf for you? Nothing to calm down. I can appeal this. You know, I can go over your head over my head to whom? I'm the Supreme Beagle. All right, that's a problem with monotheism. No accountability. Now, look, this is all going to work out fine. You'll still have your full benefits. You've got a pension plan, the new name, the whole... Wait, wait, a new name? Well, yeah, I mean, you're not We can't run around calling it Pluto, can we?

Why not? What are you going to call me? Well, let's see. Oh, yes, here we go. One, three, four, three, four, zero. What? That's a crappy name. Well, you're a dwarf now, so. I prefer little planet if you don't mind. Sorry, I didn't mean anything. I'll fix the orbit situation. Look, I'm afraid not. I mean, the kids love me. I'm sorry, my hands are tied here. And what about Disney? They'll be pissed. I can't help but... Who did you say? Disney. You know, Pluto, Mickey Mouse's dog. Who do you think he's named after? I mean, the merchandising is huge. Wow, I didn't realize you actually had a relationship with Disney. Well, maybe you had to reconsider. You know, unless you want to end up in court. Oh, please, they can't sue me. Can they?

Are you kidding? It's Disney. They'd sue a garden hose if they thought I was trying to screw with them. Okay, well, Pluto. Why don't we just sort of... Forget this ever happened? Exactly. Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. I don't think I could come back. No, no. We can make this right. What about some new moons here? Moons? What day, yeah? Little more moon-age? You like that? Well, maybe. I don't know. Okay, forget the moons. How about rings? You're gonna have some rings, like Saturn. Well, what do you think I'm some kind of pansy? No. First dwarf. Now rings, what is it? It was just a suggestion. You know what? Let's just forget the whole thing. There are other galaxies out there, you know? Maybe I'll seek opportunities elsewhere. No, you don't want to do that. I mean, where am I going to put all these moons? How about Uranus? The search for Pluto, or Planet X,

goes back to the 1840s when the irregular orbit of Uranus led to the discovery of the planet Neptune. But Neptune did not seem to account for all the wobble in Uranus' orbit. And that's where Percival Lowell of Boston comes in. Here's to the city of Boston, the home of the bean in the cod, where cabits speak only to Lowell and Lowell speak only to God. Michael Byers is the author of Percival's Planet. He spoke at the University of Kansas as part of a celebration of Clyde Tomba sponsored by the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Now Lowell was one of the great popularizers of the idea of life existing on Mars. And he actually, he thought of, he thought of the Martians as kind of being Americans. He thought they were sort of Americans because they were so industrious and so they took charge, man. So that was his big, that was Perci's big sort of thrilling thing that he was involved in. But number two was his search for Planet X, the 10th planet. Perci hoped to find the place where Pluto,

or Planet X, was, and just pointed telescope there and find it. And he tried. He tried for a long time. He started in 1905, and he died in 1916. Still looking. Now, Clyde is about to enter into this scene. But one of the things that he wouldn't know, being in Kansas, he wouldn't know what had been going on at Lowell Observatory all this time. After Perci dies, he leaves most of his money, a lot of it anyway, to the observatory. Constance Lowell, whom he married, that's another story, long story, but she fought the terms of the will and fought it for a long time. Now, she was quite crazy. I mean, quite crazy. On their honeymoon, there was sort of a surprise late-life wedding for both of them. He said, we're going to go on our honeymoon and we're going to take a hot air balloon ride. And she said, okay, that's great. She thought they were actually going to go to the moon. She was so crazy that she would pretend after Perci's death, she would come out every so often to the observatory and bother the staff, essentially.

But she would pretend to be blind. This was her big thing. She would come out and pretend to be blind. Everybody had to tend to her. And she had, she had caused the observatory a great deal of trouble, of course, by essentially blocking their source of funding for about 10 years. And they had baked her a birthday cake or something. And so she would sit in the dark with her veil on her face and pretend to be blind. And she, they opened the door, came in with the cake. And she's sitting way over there and she suddenly says, I see you've made me a cake. We're just suddenly very awkward because she's not supposed to be able to see anything. But she was such a terrifying figure that after Henry told me this story, she'd been dead for 60 years at that 50 years at that point. He sort of looked around as though he'd been overheard. So, anyway, she was a pain in the neck for this fellow, Vesto Slyfer, who, despite his name,

is not from Mars, but actually from Indiana. He was the director of the observatory. And, you know, he had to put up with, with Constance Lowell. And, but finally, the will was settled, the terms were settled, and the money was finally released to Lowell's uses, the observatory's uses. And in keeping with the Founders' mission, the search for Planet X was then resumed. So Slyfer was faced with this project Slyfer, a very serious astronomer, was faced with this project, who say, all right, how are we going to do this? This is kind of a crazy project. Percy was doing it for 10 years without results. We have to do it, because it's basically the terms of the founding of the observatory. What are we going to do? Who could ever run such a project? Cut, too. Pawnee County, Kansas. Burden. Then there's our fellow, finally, a Clyde Tombaugh. He's been making his own telescopes for some time now, out there in the middle of Kansas. He had moved with his family, perhaps, you know, from St. Illinois in 1922. He was 16, and he really didn't like it.

He was frustrated. He wanted to be here, here, here. But his family didn't have the money to send him up to college. So he was stuck out there. One of the things he did was he made telescopes. So you take two, these two glass blanks, basically just glass discs, and you rub them against each other, and eventually one gets a curve in it. So here's what you do. You grind your mirror, but it's still a little bumpy. It's microscopically bumpy. In order for it to be not bumpy anymore, that is to be able to be so smooth that it can resolve things very far away, you have to make it extremely smooth. So you have to be able to see these tiny little microscopic problems in it. Clyde Tombaugh was such a meticulous man that he would do this himself. And in fact, he built a root cellar in order to have a place in which to do this. So you need a very, very cool place where there's no air motion so that you can actually see things very clearly. You can see the flaws in the mirror. So you put your eyeball next to the laser blade.

Please note. And using this various mechanism, you can actually see the flaws. And then rub them away using extremely, extremely delicate techniques. So this is what he did. But he was able to make these telescopes that were remarkably good. Here's Clyde's drawings of Jupiter. Here he is. They're so good that he can actually draw the rotation of the weather on the planet. It's just amazing, right? He's out there in his backyard, literally in his backyard. He's hoping to come up here to Kansas. And they almost have enough money in 1928 to do this. But a freak hailstorm comes in and ruins their oat crop. At which point Clyde is desperate, becomes sort of desperate. And he writes in his autobiography, I was in the seething dilemma. I was 22 and it was time, and he had been thinking that he was going to get to come here, but they lost their funding. And it was time to think of leaving the home roost. I didn't want just any old job,

for I observed around me that those who did were likely to be stuck with that kind of work for life. I had to choose carefully. So one of the things he does is he writes to a guy named Vesto Slyfer, just essentially randomly, and says, hey, I made these drawings. What would you recommend me to do with my life? That's essentially what he said. What should I do? I don't know what I'm going to do with myself. He's that desperate. He actually does have another offer, sort of, from a guy named Napoleon Carole. Clyde wouldn't do the mirror. He wouldn't actually put the silver ring on his mirrors himself. He would send them away, send them to Wichita, to this guy Napoleon Carole, who would then put the silver ring on them and send them back. And Napoleon Carole was very impressed that he wrote to him and said, you know what? I think I can give you a job. We have this other guy who's going to be leaving. If you can just be patient for a little while, I can give you a job. Clyde wasn't so sure about that. Meanwhile, out in Flagstaff, Arizona, they're proceeding with this project to start the hunt for Planet X. And there's a great deal of pressure around this project, despite the fact there's been in delay

for about 12 years at this point. So Slytherr eventually writes back and he gets this letter and he says, oh well, we'll take a chance on this kid. He's impressed with his drawings. And anyways, he's cheap. He becomes cheap. He's not a trained astronomer. He's only been to high school. So he says, dear Mr. Tombo, would you be interested in coming to Flagstaff on a few months trial basis about the middle of January? Clyde says, yes. Dad says, Clyde, make yourself useful. And be aware of easy women. Thanks, Dad. Whereupon Clyde ends up out at Lowell, and what she would do is you would look and look and look and look and look and look and look and look. You had to make sure that the telescope, as it was tracking, I hope the sky didn't go offline, as it was taking these extremely long period photographs or about an hour's exposure. So the problem is, right, you take a bunch of pictures of the night sky and you see if anything is moving. Now, a lot of problem is a lot of stuff is moving. There's asteroids out there. Okay, there's no satellites, not yet. But there are variable stars. There's flaws in the photographic plates.

You have to be extremely meticulous to see anything that's kind of a planetary suspect. Where would we find a meticulous guy? I know, Clyde Tomba. Excellent. So what you would do is you would put one plate in here. You'd put another plate taken about a week later over here. And you would look through this eyepiece. And this shows you about a nickel's worth of each plate at a time. And it takes you about, well, it takes you a long, long time to finish each plate. Plate pair, as they called it. These are the ten special commandments for a would-be planet hunter. Behold the heavens and the great vastness thereof for a planet could be anywhere therein. Thou shalt dedicate thy whole being to the search project with infinite patience and perseverance. Thou shalt set no other work before thee for the search. I'll keep thee busy enough. Thou shalt take the plates at opposition time unless thou be deceived by asteroids near their stationary positions. Thou shalt duplicate the plates of a pair at the same hour. Angle less refraction distortions overtake thee. Thou shalt give adequate overlap of adjacent plate regions. Let's the planet play hide and seek with thee.

Thou must not become ill in the dark of the moon unless thou fall behind the opposition point. Thou shalt have no dates. Accept it full moon when long exposure plates cannot be taken at the telescope. Many false planets shall appear before thee and thou shalt check everyone with a third plate. Thou shalt not engage in any dissipation that thy years may be many for Thou shalt need them to finish the job. Remember, this is 1928-29. This is prohibition. This is when you could get your bootleg gin. No problem. There was also pressure on this project from the outside as we were saying earlier. A guy in Pickering was hunting for other bigger planets as well. They were all looking for very large objects, right? They thought they were looking for another Neptune. When I was out there doing research, I got to actually handle his observation logs and you can see he's a very careful observer he's filling in every single darn thing here. And these are a great contrast to the notebooks of the observation logs of the people who had done this project before.

When you look at those ones, you turn a page and it's filled out. There's a couple notes here and it says possible planet suspect. You turn the next page and it says possible planet suspect. Great. That's no help at all. But Clyde was very careful. So eventually he did find it. The immediate question became what is it? It's too small. It's not Neptune. It's way too small. What is it? On March 13th, they decided after trying to figure out exactly what it is. They choose to make an announcement. They've been delayed in their observation in their announcement for a few weeks, not only because it's small, but because of where they have found it. So you remember that Percival Oil had done all those calculations and in 1916 published memoir on a trans-Neptunian planet. Well, in that book he sets out a set of coordinates. He says this is where it's going to be. Well, you know where Clyde Tombow found it? It's basically right there. But the problem was it was too small. They were almost sure to have exerted any gravitational

perturbative effects on Uranus. So the mystery is how can there be an object? How could we find this thing right where it's supposed to be but have it be too small to have been tugging on Uranus all these years? It was a total mystery to them. They didn't really understand it. They thought they had a planet because they didn't really have another word for it, but they knew it wasn't planet X. It wasn't quite what they'd been looking for. Well, there's just too early to say much about this remarkable object. They don't really call it a planet. They call it a trans-Neptunian object. Much caution and concern are felt. There's a clear duty to science to make the existence known and to permit other astronomers to observe it. It's about to actually set for the season, so they have to let other people know about it. They choose March 13th because it's Percival Lowe's birthday. Pluto, its astronomical symbol is PL, which are Percival Lowe's initials. Now, it caused a huge event. Nobody hesitated to call it a planet then. Science makes it second big achievement in finding a planet.

Blot of light beyond Neptune hailed as new world. Young student credited with finding heavenly body. Former Kansas farm boy discovered new planet. Scientists at Flagstaff gave it details of being 9th. Remember how the system saw through telescopes from any size unknown as yet? They were not sure how big it was, and that was a point of contention very early on. The image itself was quite small and very faint, much fainter. But how big it actually was was really a long time in coming into understanding. It was thought to be much larger that it eventually turned out to be. And for the most part, it was taken as confirmation of Percival Lowe's theory. That is, we're going to find something because of the perturbative effects that we can observe on Neptune rather than Uranus. So for the most part, it was kind of seen at first anyway as something that was the result, the happy result of a long and stubbornly persistent project. And it sort of didn't matter to the public how what had happened

because people were extremely excited about it. It was about six months after the stock market crashed. The dust ball was starting to kick up some dust and it was believed, well, hard times were a common. Nobody quite knew how hard they were going to be yet. But this was an example. It doesn't matter who says otherwise of good old American know how. We went out, we were going to find a planet and darn it, we found a planet. And people were immediately ready to name it. Out in the archives, you can read all those letters. We suggested that the newly discovered planet be named Eureka. I have found it because it has been looked for four years and finally found this is original with Adrian Stokes and sent in by Claire Chambers, both of Athens. Not the code. Gentlemen, in regards to the controversy, making the newly discovered planet by your naming, the newly discovered planet by your observatory, permit me to suggest a combination name for same. The planet was discovered in the 20th, comma, century, comma. So I suggest comma to use the first three letters of 20,

semi-colon, then same, was first seen by the institution, Lowell, comma. He was also the first three letters, comma, this would make a combination of the 12-O planet. Why didn't they choose the 12-O planet? The letters are just, they're so charming and there's so many of them. There are many, many, many of them. This one is from Clyde's pastor, a guy named W.B. Summers. D.S. is, I am joining the rest of the world, capitals, and sending congratulations to Mr. Tom Buffer's recent discovery. I was his pastor for five, capitalized years, and never met a finer or more studious young man. He used to take me out on his place and have me look through his telescope. In suggesting names for the planet, please allow me to suggest either Burdette or Streeter, both towns in which he was reared and either of them harmonized in shortness of name, and in no other way, with the other planets. All of Pawnee County Kansas and the town of Burdette, Kansas,

and Streeter Illinois, I feel that Mr. Tom Buffer should share in some way the name of the planet very truly. The myth, of course, is that there was a young girl, an Isha Barney, who thought, oh, I'm going to name a Bruto, Papa, and sent a telegram, and was the first to think of it. In fact, the guys at Lowell Observatory, after Minerva, which was their first choice, that name was taken by an asteroid, they all thought Pluto was the name that made the most sense given Saturn, Jupiter, and Uranus, and Neptune, as a member of that family, and of the letters that come in from the public, most of them, or anyway, a preponderance of them, say Pluto. So it's actually, the story of Anisha Barney is a good one, but it's phony. There was some question about exactly, in my mind, anyway, as I was researching this, like, what did they know, and when did they know it? When did they know they had a bit of a, not quite a planet planet.

I came to the conclusion that they knew it almost immediately. In fact, thought that the thing that they'd seen was a moon at first, and that they were eventually going to see the planet itself. So you can see, Tomba, or rather, Vesto Slyther, saying that we had to kind of wait and figure out what was going on, given the amount of pressure that we were under, which makes sense. But for a long time, Pluto's been kind of recalculated. Its size has been recalculated. Pluto's discovered in 1930. This is 1932. So already, they're saying, you know what? It's not quite what we thought it was. I discovered the planet Pluto in 1930. It's hard to tell how small this thing was. On February 18th, 1930, discovered the planet Pluto from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. We have a picture of the sky as it looked that fateful night. May we go back here and look at it, sir. I remember it. Here is a picture of the sky as it looked that night.

The first most obvious question, sir, is what is this blob? It looks like the CBSI, but I'm sure it isn't. This is a third magnitude star, not very bright, to the naked eye, and it's the only object on this entire photograph that is visible to the naked eye. Well, where this picture was taken by a magnification, if we're not for the magnification you could see, none of these other dots you could only see this one. Right. All right. Now, this area of the sky, how many, well, the purposes of an ignorant layman, I'm going to call them all stars. I know that there are other ones that are nebulaing one thing or another, but let's call them all stars. How many dots are there on here? How many bodies are there? Approximately 10,000. 10,000. Well now, this being this rather puny third magnitude star, where is Pluto? Pluto is this little object right here. It's about the smallest spot on there. Thank the whole thing looked like somebody sprayed milk through a screen door. Pluto is there.

Now, out of all of this mess, how did you find this one little thing? This photograph was made on the 29th of January, 1930. On another photograph made six nights earlier, it was up here. This little spot was up here. Yes. Everything else, in other words, in the earlier photograph, moved, of course, as it always does, but it moved all within the same relationship to each other. Yes. Nothing else on this photograph moved. I mean, it's ridiculous. I mean, it's so small. These plates are out there at the old observatory. You can actually go see the plates or copies of them, of the plates that he looked at to find that little tiny thing. There are arrows on the glass plates. So you look through the comparator, then he looks through to see them, and you still can't see it. You're supposed to look right. It's just, it is amazing. When you put the picture together, I mean, you put the whole picture together of this guy having that background and getting called to do this project,

you come to the point where I finally realized that there was, there may have been literally nobody else in the whole country who could have done this job and found that thing. I mean, the work was so painstaking, that's a tiny portion of that big glass plate that would have been exposed. And this was not the first one that he looked at. This was, this is one that he looked at after ten months of looking at them, hour after, hour day after day after day after day, and not just doing that, but taking the pictures themselves. So being up there on the hill, being up all night, many nights anyway, and standing there with his eye at the telescope to make sure that the gears didn't shift or shimmy. I mean, it's the more that I learned about this and the more that the details of it came to light for me, the more I thought this shouldn't have happened. In fact, we shouldn't probably have found Pluto until about 1975, right?

When we began really looking out there. There is a way in which you can say that Pluto as a sort of a physical object definitely is more of this class, that is, eras series palace than this class, but these things clear out their orbit and do the stuff that they're supposed to do and these things kind of don't. It doesn't make it less of a planet, really. It's just a different kind of planet, right? A dwarf planet. We can see that there is in fact sort of a room for a different kind of category of object, which we can still consider planets, right? I was writing this book in 2006 when Pluto was demoted and my first thought was, oh great, okay. There it goes, my book. It was like, I'm writing a book about Titanic, and then it's saying crap. But then it turns out everybody loves Pluto. Hey, great, okay, so it turns out that was a bonus for the book rather than the opposite. And people didn't know you don't know what you have

until you put up a paradise, pave the parking lot. How's it go? Anyway, yeah, we wanted Pluto back. Dear scientist, what do you call Pluto? If it's not planet anymore, if you're making a planet again, all the science books will be right. People live on Pluto. If there are people who live there, they won't exist. Why can't Pluto be a planet? Ha, ha, ha. The name you're in is just funny. No wait, that's not it. Some people like Pluto, please write back, but not in cursive because I can't read in cursive. I think I know how we all feel. We want Pluto to be a planet again. I know from reading and from talking to people that of course the question of what Pluto was and how to talk about it, how to classify it, was certainly an active question for all of Clyde's life. He was very much in the, of course, I found a planet. Camp? The other thing that was remarkable to me as a writer in learning about Clyde was how happy he looks in all these pictures. I guess you find a planet, you have a lot to be happy about,

but I think it went quite a bit deeper than that. For Clyde, I think it was sort of his base level. He was a happy man from what I've heard. In every picture you see, he's just kind of beaming. So it was, I guess, both a pleasure and an honor to spend all that much time in his head and in his life, writing it and trying to imagine my way into his, his head. But of course it doesn't end there. We're still finding planets in our, our count of exoplanets has just begun to go through the roof. It's amazing. Not only the stuff in the Kuiper Belt and beyond, but planets in orbit around other suns, including Xarmina's world, which is a glazy 581G. The first so-called Cinderella planet. It's one of these planets that's just about in the right composition and in the right place in its orbit, the right distance rather from its star, to be able to have liquid water on it, which, as we think, has a lot to do with being able to host some life.

So we will continue to look for new worlds. And I'm sure to be as excited about them as it seems Clyde Tomba was and remained. All his life. Thank you. Michael Byers is the author of Percival's Planet. He spoke at the University of Kansas on April 19, 2011. In Arizona at the turn of the century, astro-mathematician Percival Lowell was searching for what he called planet X because he knew deep down in his soul that an unseen gravitational presence met a new planet spinning in the air, joining the other eight already known, circling our son up there. But Percival Lowell died in 1916. His theory is still only a theory,

till 1930 when Clyde Tomba in a scientific query discovered planet X 3.7 billion miles from our son, a smallish ball of frozen rock, methane and nitrogen. It joined Mercury, Venus, Earth Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Our solar systems knew its neighbor two-thirds the size of our moon. A tiny barely visible spec, cool minus 440 below, not exactly paradise. They named the planet Pluto. That same year, 1930, Walt Disney, debuted his own Pluto as well. But a cartoon dog with a very same name as the CEO of Hell

was not your normal Disney-style, most figured he was riding the coattails. A Pluto maniac sweeping the land, not unlike our modern love for dolphins and whales. For the next five decades, mysterious Pluto, captivated our minds. As late as 1978, its own lone charon was seen for the very first time. But now, telescopes and satellites and computer calculations say that Pluto may not be a planet at all, creating great consternation. Some scientists say that Pluto is a trans-Neptonian interlopers swept away by an unknown force, or remnant of a wayward comet somehow sucked off course. Others say that Pluto is an asteroid and the sun's gravitational pull.

But if you ask Clyde Tombaugh, he'll tell you that's all bull. I get hundreds of letters from kids every year. He says, it's Pluto, the planet they love. It's not Pluto, the comet. It's not Pluto, the asteroid. They wonder about about. And at the International Astronomical Union working group for planetary system nomenclature. They too say that Pluto is a planet, reinforcing Clyde Tombaugh's view of nature. Norwegian carry X-ness, professor at the theoretical astrophysics institute. He too says that Pluto is a planet and a significant one to boot. But at the University of Colorado astronomer Larry has posito. Says if Pluto were discovered today, it would not be a planet end of discussion for Nito. He says that it was not spanoff

from solar matter like the other eight planets we know. By every scientific measurement we have, is Pluto a planet known? And now 20 astronomy textbooks be afraid of Pluto is less than a planet. I guess if Pluto showed up in a planet convention, the balancer out the door might have to ban it. I think Christopher is looking down on all this and he says, Pluto, I can relate. When I was demoted from St. hood, I got to tell you little buddy, it didn't feel real great. And Scorpios look up in this maybe cause Pluto rules their sign. Is now reading their daily horoscope just a futile waste of time? It takes 247 Earth's years for Pluto to circle our son. It's tiny and it's cold,

but all heavenly bodies. It's Clyde Tombaugh's favorite one. He's 19 now and works every day and lost crews as new Mexico. Determine to maintain the planetary status of his beloved Pluto. But how are we going to deal with it? If science comes up with the proof, the Pluto is never a planet. How do we handle this truth? As the PhDs all disagree, we don't know yet who's wrong or who's right. But wherever you are, whatever you are, Pluto, we know you're out there tonight. And in the year 2003, you're going to see the NASA Pluto Express. Fly by and take pictures of your waycool surface to send to this webpage address. H-T-T-P colon spliced us to o-x-x.calarado.edu-slash

Pluto home.html You got your own webpage for the little guy you've made quite a splash. You set the turn of the 20th century astro-mathematician Percival Lowell in his quest for our planet X Starter this ball to roll But at the end of the 20th century we think he may have been a little off-base. So we look at the sky and wonder what new surprises so it us and outer space. We look at the sky and we wonder. You're listening to KPR Presents on Kansas Public Radio. People all over the world had their eyes on Pluto this week, among them Doug Tomba of Kansas City, Clyde Tomba's nephew. He stopped by the KPR studios this week to talk to Jay Schaefer

about his famous uncle. He loved telescopes, he loved the sky. He got into it because he loved geology and he thought about what must geology be like on other planets? And that guy in thinking about telescopes they couldn't afford to buy telescopes so he learned to build them. I understand he built one with spare farm implements in car parts. Who does that? We call it his famous 9-inch Newtonian, which one of my cousins still has. And he built it with car parts? Well, you know, it looked like they went out to the junkyard at the farm and just picked up what they could. There was an axle from a 1916 Buick making up part of the equatorial mount that stood on the stand of an old cream separator. There were some counterweights that looked like they could have been off maybe a steam-threshing machine. This just blows my mind. And then he ground his own... Ground is mirrors my hand. It was his third or fourth try to telescope. It turned out to yield beautiful images. And he made drawings

of Mars and Jupiter. And at that time Lowell Observatory was kind of the Mars expert, the experts on Mars. And he sent drawings that he made from that scope for a feedback. And they said these are good. What are you doing the next winter? And they invited him up. It was an internship. That's a paid internship, basically. And he worked out. I had read somewhere that he had single-handedly mapped some percent of the Milky Way. He used to say it was 70 percent of the sky visible from the Northern Hemisphere. That he had looked at every individual object that was visible through that 13-inch camera. That seems tedious to me. But I suppose he was all about it. It was very tedious. But I think that's what separated him as he was able to do that and keep it up for hours and do a good job. And it paid off. It paid off big. Did he tell you he knew the moment that he had found

something, perhaps what he'd been looking for? Oh, absolutely. The quote to himself was that's it. When you achieve such worldwide fame at the age of 24, before you even have a college degree, what does that feel like? Or did he ever describe what that felt like? He was proud of the fact that he was able to do that. But he felt it was necessary to go get an education and he did. Kansas University, of course, gave him a full-ride scholarship. Do you get the sense that your uncle had some sort of an emotional connection with Pluto? Yes. It was his planet. And he defended it. He didn't like people attacking it. He was, he was proud of it. At some point, someone at the Smithsonian institution reached out to your uncle, saying, hey, we sure would like to get one of your hand-built telescopes. Can you send it to us? They were actually particularly interested in that 9-inch Newtonian that's kind of an

iconic photo of him with one hand on it. And this is the quote to himself. This is the one he built on the farm in Kansas. Yes. That he built on the farm in Kansas. Uncle Clyde loved to tell that story. He would say, yeah, the Smithsonian has sent me a couple letters saying they want my 9-inch telescope. And I have to tell them that I'm not done using it yet. And he's in his 80s at this point. Oh, yeah. He was, yeah, old man. It seems like your uncle had a life long curiosity. Oh, absolutely. And he'd be out in the backyard with one of the telescopes he made in later years. He wasn't a spy. So he kind of made some concessions to that. And he built a 10-inch dobsonian mount telescope not painted real well. But a beautifully grounded mirror. He mounted it on the chassis of an old pushmower. So he could move it around the yard to get a better view of what he wanted to look at. And more than once we drive up and he'd be out in the backyard. We were looking through that thing or pushing it around.

What do you think he would think about this nine and a half-year voyage to Pluto to take the best pictures we've ever seen of this mysterious planet. And even after those great pictures are taken, Pluto was so far away it's going to take four hours traveling at the speed of light for those pictures to get back here. Well, first he'd be very excited about it. And he did have a a childlike enthusiasm about things like this. So that number one thing he'd be excited. And he would be down at JPL watching the pictures come in. Jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena. Yeah. Yeah, he'd be sitting on the edge of his seat and he'd be proud. But more than anything, he'd be interested in the science. He understood that the more we learn, what we know changes. He defended his planet. But he was a scientist. I'd like to think that he would look at it like I do.

It was a political decision, not a not a thoroughly scientific decision. It's not entirely wrong to classify Pluto as another type of planet. But it does hurt a little bit that it's not one of the main nine anymore. I have forgiven Neil deGrasse Tyson, though. And he probably would have, too. His daughter did. I had read and I believe it to be true that your uncle's discovery in 1930 was such a big deal that Walt Disney got Mickey Mouse to name his dog, Pluto. Mickey had a dog without a name. And that dog was named Pluto. Have you read some of these things? Platonium was supposedly named the Radioactive Material after Pluto. That's what I've understood also. And a few years ago, one of my cousins, his daughter, was trying to actually nail down that story. Pluto, the dog, actually did show

up after Pluto the planet. And it's assumed that that was part of the Pluto mania that followed. Yeah, it was a big deal. I remember him having, and what he described as the world's only Pluto watch. He had a watch with the dog. And it was custom built for him with Pluto, the dog on it. So Uncle Clyde wore a watch with the Disney character Pluto on it. Yes. It was hilarious. Well, back to what kind of guy he was, just in person, just around the family or hanging out. He had a good sense of humor. He loved the corny jokes. What else? He enjoyed his family. His family was very important to him. His roots were very important to him. He thought he was very proud of being a kanzin, very proud of being a farmer. And continued to be interested in agricultural things, and always kept

up on anybody from rural Kansas. I mean, the weather is important. And it was one of the first things he always talked about when we corresponded. And what's the weather been like? How's the wheat look? You know, he stayed connected to where he was from. That's Doug Tombaugh in Kansas City. The nephew of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto back in 1930. A small canister containing some of Clyde Tombaugh's cremated remains is on board the new horizon spacecraft, which made a historic flyby of Pluto earlier this week. To close out the hour, we'll hear Pluto the Renewer by British composer Colin Matthews. It's an addition to the planet's suite by Gustav Holst, who completed his famous suite years before Pluto was discovered. I hope you've enjoyed this look at Pluto and its history. I'm Kay McIntyre. KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio

at the University of Kansas. The