The History of Pluto In the 1840s, Urbain Le Verrier predicted the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after

analyzing disruptions in the orbit of Uranus. Observations of Neptune in the 19th century caused astronomers to speculate that Uranus orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune. In 1906 Percival Lowell, a wealthy Bostonian, started an extensive project in the lab he started, the Lowell Observatory, in search of a possible ninth planet, which he referred to as Planet X. He did not find anything, though he continued searching until his death in 1916. Unbeknownst to Lowell, on March 19, 1915, his observatory had captured two faint images of Pluto, but he did not recognize them for what they were. After Lowells death, search for Planet X did not resume until 1929. When the Lab resumed work, it had Clyde Tombaugh systematically imaging the night sky in pairs of photographs taken two weeks apart, then examining each pair to see if any objects had shifted position. On February 19, 1930, Tombaugh discovered a possible moving object on the photographs taken on January 23 and January 29 of 1930. After he obtained confirmatory photographs, news of the discovery was telegraphed to the Harvard College Observatory on March 13, 1930. The Lowell Observatory had the right to name the planet, and many different suggestions were received. There was over a 1000 suggestions ranging from Atlas to Zymal. Constance Lowell, Percival Lowells widow, proposed Zeus, then Lowell, and finally, Constance. All were disregarded. The name Pluto was suggested by Venetia Burney, and eleven-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford, England. Venetia was interested in both classical mythology and astronomy. She considered the name of the Roman god of the underworld was an appropriate name for such a presumably dark and cold world. She suggested it in a conversation with her grandfather, who passed the name to a Professor at the University of Oxford, who passed it to his colleagues in the US. Planet X was officially named on March 24th, 1930. Each member of the Lowell Observatory was allowed to vote on a list of three possible names. The names were: Minerva, which was already the name of an asteroid, Cronus, which had garnered a bad reputation after being suggested by an unpopular astronomer named Thomas Jefferson Jackson See, and Pluto. Pluto received every vote. Venetia got five pounds as a reward. The name was soon embraced by wider culture. The Disney character Pluto, introduced in 1930, was named in the planets honor. In 1941, Glenn T. Seaborg named the newly created element plutonium after Pluto, in keeping with the tradition of naming elements after newly discovered planets, such as uranium and neptunium. Exploration of Pluto has been looked at ever since August of 1992 when NASA scientist Robert Staehle contacted Tombaugh requesting permission to visit his planet. Tombaugh replied that he was welcome to it, though hes got to go one long, cold trip. Despite that, NASA cancelled its Pluto Kuiper Express mission, citing cost and launch vehicle delays. A revised mission to Pluto, named New Horizons, was granted funding from the U.S. government in 2003. It was launched successfully on January 19, 2006. The leader of the mission confirmed that some of the ashes of Tombaugh were placed on board the spacecraft. The spacecrafts closest approach to Pluto will be on July 14, 2015. Meanwhile, controversy was arising about whether Pluto should be a planet. Pluto is part of a belt of frozen globs of stuff called the Kuiper belt, which extends from 2,788,674,210 miles from the sun to 5,112,569,385 miles from the sun. The issue was brought to a head with the discovery of Eris, a thing like Pluto in the Kuiper belt, which is believed to be 27% more massive than Pluto. This discovery prompted the International Astronomical Union, or IAU, for short, to define what a planet is. It said a planet was a celestial body that 1. is in orbit around the sun, 2. has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium, or a nearly round shape, and, 3. has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit, meaning that it is gravitationally dominant in its area. Pluto isnt, because it is part of the Kuiper Belt, which makes it fall into the category of dwarf planet, or celestial bodies that dont meet the third criteria. Thus Pluto is the second largest dwarf planet, behind Eris and ahead of Makemake, Haumea, and Ceres, part of the Asteroid Belt. Pluto has been made fun of a lot more after its loss of planetship. For example, Failblog has made a shirt that says Silly Pluto, orbiting the sun is for real planets. Well. I hope you enjoyed my speech on the history of Pluto and I hope you werent bored to death by it.