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JJohnston015 t1_j69cxx8 wrote

I had the good fortune to be at NMSU at the same time as Dr. Tombaugh. I don't think he was on the faculty, I think he just lived in Las Cruces, but why wouldn't he be at the astronomy department all the time. I attended on of his last lectures, and he was "on". He must have been 150 years old, badly hunched over with osteoporosis, but his mind and his voice were still strong, and he gave a lively and fascinating lecture on the search for Pluto - one of the highlights of my time there.

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scuzzy987 t1_j6ayyy5 wrote

I saw a presentation by him on how he discovered Pluto. He said he had two photographs of the same small region of space and flipped them back and forth to find a white dot that moved. He said it was very tedious and he looked at lots of pairs of photographs. He was a very interesting presenter

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JJohnston015 t1_j6azbqn wrote

Yes, he showed us those same 2 pictures. As he flipped the projector back and forth, he pointed out the one that jumped back and forth. That was it.

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