The Sedona Heritage Museum hosted Sedona-based author Diane Phelps Budden and Lowell Observatory historian Kevin Schindler for a talk on “Tiny Pluto Has a Big Heart” on Thursday, March 27, as part of its Sedona Stories speaker series.

“It’s a testament to the heritage we have in Arizona of doing science, of appreciating the science, celebrating it … it’s part of who we are,” Schindler said of Lowell’s recent recognition as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Exciting Destinations to Visit. “It’s fun for me to work with Diane because I work in a research facility, but I love the human stories. And the story of Pluto is all humanist — human drive, Persistence. “When people say, ‘No,’ you don’t take that as a final answer. ‘I don’t have money to build a telescope.’ ‘I’ll figure it out. I’ll use my smarts and do it that way.’ It’s a great story of America … and finding inspiration in the cosmos.”

Budden discussed the life of Clyde W. Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto, while Schindler talked about Pluto’s history of observation since its discovery, its 2006 reclassification as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union in 2006, the 2015 NASA New Horizons flyby and the renaming of asteroid 1999 (AQ23) as 29722 Chrisgraham for Sedona Red Rock News Managing Editor Christopher Fox Graham during the I Heart Pluto Festival in February.

Born to Muron and Adella Chritton Tombaugh on a farm near Streator, Ill., on Feb. 4, 1906, Tombaugh was the eldest of six children.

“In grade school, I loved geography and history,” Tombaugh wrote in the 1980 book “Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto.” “One day, while in sixth grade, the thought occurred to me, ‘What would the geography on the other planets be like?’”

To help him work out the answer to that question, Tombaugh built a homemade telescope out of a cream separator base and components from a 1910 Oldsmobile. The family relocated to southwest central Kansas in 1922 and Tombaugh had to drop out of high school for a year to work on the farm, eventually graduating in 1925.

“On June 20, 1928, we were the victims of an agricultural calamity,” Tombaugh later wrote. “An ominous, bluish-black cloud rose up from the northwest in the late afternoon … The noise was deafening. Heaving rain followed. After it passed, Dad and I went to the fields to inspect the damage. We had a 20-acre field of oats just west of the house. It was shoulder-high and would have been the best we had ever raised. In a few more days it would have been ripe enough to cut … We would be flat broke until the next year. I said, ‘Farming is not for me. The first chance I have of getting out of it, I’m  going.’ The prospect of going to college seemed more remote than ever.” 

After seeing an observation report on Mars in “Popular Astronomy,” Tombaugh sent some of his astronomical drawings to Lowell Observatory for feedback. At the time, the observatory was seeking an assistant for a new planetary search program. After some correspondence, Director V.M. Slipher invited Tombaugh to join the team; he accepted the offer and left for Flagstaff on Jan. 14, 1929.

Tombaugh discovered Pluto on Feb. 18, 1930, by using the observatory’s instrument to compare photographs of the night sky taken on different nights. By identifying a small moving speck of light against the backdrop of thousands of fixed stars, Tombaugh was able to confirm the existence of Pluto. The discovery was announced in March 1930, making headlines worldwide, with the Associated Press naming it one of the top 10 news events in the world for 1930.

Budden said that she fell in love with Tombaugh’s story because of his ability to triumph over adversity and because she viewed him as a role model for children. As an example, she read her most recent book “Needle in a Haystack: How Clyde W. Tombaugh Found an Awesome New World” to Kelly Cadigan’s fourth-grade classroom at West Sedona School in March.

Tombaugh built over 30 telescopes in his lifetime, living up to the Kansas state motto of “Ad Astra Per Aspera” — “Through hardship to the stars.” Schindler’s half of the talk will be covered in a future issue of the NEWS.

The final presentation of the Sedona Stories spring season will be given by Neil Weintraub, a retired archaeologist from the Kaibab National Forest, on the Sedona archaeological site “Tim’s Cave” on Thursday, April 10, at 10 a.m