THURSDAY 5 MARCH 2020Look out for snow-white Pluto
and the eight dwarfs
Celebrate 90 years since the discovery of one of the iciest objects to
exist in our solar system, writes Nigel Henbest
In 2006, the planet was demoted for being too small (Nasa)
NIGEL HENBEST
Ninety years ago this month, the Lowell Observatory in Arizona sent out a telegram stating that they had
found an “object which for seven weeks has, in rate of motion and path, consistently conformed to that of a
trans-Neptunian body”.
In other words, a new planet, at the outer edge of the solar system. This cold distant world was discovered
by a young assistant at the observatory, Clyde Tombaugh. “I was terribly excited,” Tombaugh told me when