Clyde

Clyde Tombaugh was only twenty-four years old when he discovered Pluto.

Clyde Tombaugh was born on a farm in Illinois. His father was a farmer.

Clyde dreamed of going to college and becoming an astronomer.

There was a big storm the year Clyde planned to go to college. The family's crops were ruined by the storm. There was no money to pay for college.

Clyde used a telescope he built himself to study Mars and Jupiter. He then drew pictures of what he saw.

Clyde was dissatisfied with his store-bought telescope and decided to build one for himself. Clyde's father took a second job to pay for the materials needed to build it.

The telescope Clyde built in 1925 was only the first of more than thirty telescopes he was to build over his lifetime.

Clyde made very detailed drawings of his telescopic observations of Jupiter and Mars.

Clyde joined the search for Percival Lowell's "Planet X", a planet beyond Neptune.

Clyde Tombaugh's job was to photograph one small piece of the night sky at a time. He then had to carefully examine and compare the photos in an effort to detect an unidentified moving point of light that might be a planet.