![]() ![]() Amateur astronomer Tombaugh was hired to expose photographic plates with this new camera by night, and to carefully compare the plates by day using an instrument called a blink comparator. Observatory director Vesto Slipher hired a young man from Kansas to conduct the third search - a move that led to Clyde Tombaugh becoming the first American to discover a planet. In 1929, a special camera-equipped telescope with a 13-inch objective lens was built specifically for this search. He died in 1916 without discovering it, but the search continued at the observatory. Lowell founded an observatory and funded three separate searches for Planet X. Pickering was another) who hunted for Planet X by computing orbits and carefully searching the sky where they concluded the new planet ought to be. Lowell was one of several people ( William H. Astronomers reasoned that the mystery planet's apparent gravitational influence on Uranus and Neptune could be used to calculate where in the sky it should be found. After all, the planet Neptune had been discovered in 1846 by examining irregularities in the orbit of Uranus. Lowell was obsessed with the notion of a "trans-Neptunian" planet, which he believed could be detected from the effect it would have on Neptune's orbit. The story of Pluto's discovery begins with Percival Lowell, the founder of Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The period around Pluto's closest approach to the Sun - known as perihelion - was a busy time for Pluto events! Click the graphics below for a closer look. By the time the planned New Horizons mission makes its flyby of Pluto in 2015, the dwarf planet will have made almost a complete orbit of the Sun. Declaration of Independence in 1776 through historic events of the past couple of centuries. Imagine an observer looking down on the solar system from 18 billion miles (30 billion kilometers) above and watching Pluto from the time of the U.S. This is strong evidence against the idea that Pluto is an escaped moon of Neptune. As a result, Pluto and Neptune are never very close to each other. Pluto orbits the Sun twice for every three orbits of Neptune. ![]() While Pluto's orbit is close to Neptune's, the planets won't collide since their orbits are in an exact resonance. While all of the other planets have orbits that are close to the ecliptic, Pluto's orbit is inclined by 17 degrees. ![]() Pluto's orbit has an eccentricity of 0.25, which means that Pluto's distance from the Sun is as little as 29.7 AU - temporarily bringing it closer to the Sun than Neptune - and as great as 49.7 au.įor about 20 years in each orbit, Pluto is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune. Pluto's 248-year long orbit is less circular - more elliptical or "egg-shaped" - than those of the other planets. ![]()
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