Pluto is the ninth planet of the solar system. It is the one scientists have found harder to study, mostly because of its location, being thirty nine times as far from the Sun as Earth is, at an average distance of 3.647.240.000 miles. The planet was first identified by Percival Lowell in 1905. This American astronomer found that the force of gravity of one unknown object seemed to affect the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. Then, he got suspicious of this unknown object being an actual planet and started shooting and studying photographs from this part of the sky in is observatory in Arizona, without ever being successful as he died in 1916 without finding it. Better luck had one of his assistants that pursued his work, Clyde W. Tombaugh. Using Lowell's mapping and calculations, and a much powerful, wide-range telescope, finally in 1930, he discovered a dot moving among standstill dots. Pluto had been found.
Source: Nasa
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Images in
National Geographic Magazine - July, 1939
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