My Dad Discovered Pluto
The find of a lifetime
The observatory was looking for
someone to continue the search first begun by its founder, Percival
Lowell, in 1905. Until his death in 1916, Lowell had sought what he
called "planet X." This was an as-yet undiscovered planet whose
gravity, Lowell believed, was perturbing the orbits of Uranus and
Neptune. My father, seen here in 1928, began meticulously examining
images of a portion of the night sky where Lowell thought planet X
might be. On February 18, 1930 at about 4 p.m., months of hard work
paid off: My dad discovered a moving dot of light that would soon be
known to all the world as Pluto.