30 Facts About Clyde Tombaugh

Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt.

Clyde Tombaugh was born in Streator, Illinois, son of Muron Dealvo Clyde Tombaugh, a farmer, and his wife Adella Pearl Chritton.

Clyde Tombaugh sent drawings of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, at Flagstaff, Arizona, which offered him a job.

Clyde Tombaugh then used a blink comparator to compare the different images.

Clyde Tombaugh noticed such a moving object in his search, near the place predicted by Lowell, and subsequent observations showed it to have an orbit beyond that of Neptune.

Clyde Tombaugh would understand they had a real problem when they start finding several of these things flying around the place.

Clyde Tombaugh continued searching for over a decade after the discovery of Pluto, and the lack of further discoveries left him satisfied that no other object of a comparable apparent magnitude existed near the ecliptic.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered hundreds of variable stars, as well as star clusters, galaxy clusters, and a galaxy supercluster.

The asteroid 1604 Clyde Tombaugh, discovered in 1931, is named after him.

Clyde Tombaugh discovered hundreds of asteroids, beginning with 2839 Annette in 1929, mostly as a by-product of his search for Pluto and his searches for other celestial objects.

Clyde Tombaugh named some of them after his wife, children and grandchildren.

Clyde Tombaugh was probably the most eminent astronomer to have reported seeing unidentified flying objects.

Clyde Tombaugh observed these rectangles of light for about 3 seconds and his wife saw them for about.

Clyde Tombaugh never supported the interpretation as a spaceship that has often been attributed to him.

Clyde Tombaugh considered other possibilities, with a temperature inversion as the most likely cause.

Clyde Tombaugh later reported having seen three of the mysterious green fireballs, which suddenly appeared over New Mexico in late 1948 and continued at least through the early 1950s.

Shortly after this, in January 1957, in an Associated Press article in the Alamogordo Daily News titled "Celestial Visitors May Be Invading Earth's Atmosphere", Clyde Tombaugh was again quoted on his sightings and opinion about them.

Clyde Tombaugh stated that he had observed celestial phenomena which he could not explain, but had seen none personally since 1951 or 1952.

In 1949, Clyde Tombaugh had told the Naval missile director at White Sands Missile Range, Commander Robert McLaughlin, that he had seen a bright flash on Mars on August 27,1941, which he now attributed to an atomic blast.

Clyde Tombaugh noted that the first atomic bomb tested in New Mexico would have lit up the dark side of the Earth like a neon sign and that Mars was coincidentally quite close at the time, the implication apparently being that the atomic test would have been visible from Mars.

Clyde Tombaugh told Hynek that his telescopes were at the Air Force's disposal for taking photos of UFOs, if he was properly alerted.

Clyde Tombaugh's offer may have led to his involvement in a search for Near-Earth objects, first announced in late 1953 and sponsored by the Army Office of Ordnance Research.

Clyde Tombaugh adds that there is no connection between the search program and the reports of so-called flying saucers.

At a meteor conference in Los Angeles in 1957, Clyde Tombaugh reiterated that his four-year search for "natural satellites" had been unsuccessful.

In 1959, Clyde Tombaugh was to issue a final report stating that nothing had been found in his search.

Clyde Tombaugh worked at White Sands Missile Range in the early 1950s, and taught astronomy at New Mexico State University from 1955 until his retirement in 1973.

Clyde Tombaugh was an active Unitarian Universalist, and he and his wife helped found the Unitarian Universalist Church of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Clyde Tombaugh died on January 17,1997, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, at the age of 90, and he was cremated.

Clyde Tombaugh was survived by his wife, Patricia, and their children, Annette and Alden.

Professor Clyde Tombaugh was working on a giant electronic telescope to photograph it, under a Guggenheim grant, but he had a special interest; he discovered Pluto years before I was born.