Word: tombaugh
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...either Newton was wrong - though he'd been right for hundreds of years, so why assume that? - or there was some other mass out there that they hadn't cataloged yet that was influencing the motion of Neptune. So that was the famous Planet X. And eventually, Clyde Tombaugh in Arizona discovered a planet, which got named Pluto. Not by an American, though, because an American would never have named it after a highly advertised, highly marketed laxative of the same name that was popular then...
...wonder. The solar system most of us studied in school was a deceptively simple place. There were the sun, a few asteroids and comets and, as of 1930, when Clyde Tombaugh spotted Pluto on a telescopic photograph, nine planets. Memorizing those nine names has long been a childhood rite of passage, up there with learning to tie your shoes. Yes, Pluto was always an oddball: not only is it tiny (two-thirds the size of our moon), but it has a weird, elongated orbit that is tilted at a sharp angle to the plane the other planets inhabit. Still...
Super-imaging is valuable for more than recreational work. There's not an amateur out there who hasn't looked in the mirror and seen Clyde Tombaugh, the self-taught stargazer who discovered Pluto in 1930, or David Levy, the celebrated amateur who has discovered or co-discovered 21 comets, including the famous Shoemaker-Levy, which crashed into Jupiter in 1994. While there are only so many planets or visible comets out there, amateurs are making contributions tracking star movements and lunar cycles and even hunting for supernovas. Larry Mitchell, the Houstonian with the 36-in. telescope, spotted...