In 1930, the New York Times reported that ‘Pluto’ is the provisional name that Italian astronomers have given to the new trans-Neptune planet discovered March 13 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona” (26 Mar. 10/3). It was the English school girl, Venetia Burney, who suggested the name Pluto after the Greek god of the underworld who was able to make himself invisible. The letters p and l were also the initials of Percival Lowell, the astronomer who predicted the existence of a ninth planet in the solar system, and so Pluto was deemed an apt name for this eerie world on the edge of our solar system.
In 2006, Pluto was demoted to the status of a dwarf planet because it did not fit the International Astronomical Union’s three criteria for a full size planet. Fortunately, however, it has become the star of the show this week as the New Horizons probe successfully completed its fly-by of the planet.
What’s incredible about this mission is that it marks a major milestone in man’s initial exploration of the original nine planets thought to be in our solar system. In 1781, Sir William Herschel discovered the first planet by telescope (that is, the first planet unobservable by the naked eye), which was Uranus. It wasn’t until 1966, though, that we got our first detailed photograph of a planet: the earth shown from the surface of the moon in August 1966 and then photographed in full view in December 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew. Since July 2015, we now have detailed images of every single planet in our solar system.
Pluto status
So what’s next? For the New Horizon spacecraft, at least, it will continue on into the Kaipur belt—a field of comets which marks the end of our solar system. Its power source will die out somewhere in the 2030’s, but who knows what images it will send back to us by then? The first photo of a planet from outside our solar system was taken in 2004 by the European Southern Observatory, so the appetite to continue exploring never ceases.
What would Clyde Tombaugh make of these new images of Pluto? He would no doubt be delighted, although he died almost ten years before the New Horizons probe was launched in 2006. Poignantly, however, he has not been forgotten: on board the New Horizon spacecraft is a very special cargo–the ashes of the man who discovered Pluto.
