My Dad Discovered Pluto
Aiding the space program
In 1945, the Lowell Observatory
let my father go, ostensibly for financial reasons. So the following
year he began working at New Mexico's White Sands Proving Grounds
(now White Sands Missile Range), developing and installing
optical-tracking telescopes for the burgeoning space program. In
this photo, my dad (left) appears in about 1950 with military
associates at a new site near the top of the San Andres Mountains.
He had assembled a missile-tracking theodolite that was about to be
mounted at the site.