THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: The Discovery of Pluto

This week, we will be taking a brief interval off from our weekly featurette 'Women in STEM'. Instead, we would like to experiment with a new weekly history feature called 'This Week in Science History'. Here, we would like to star an interesting milestone in science history that occurred in the past week (some years ago). We hope that you enjoy these amazing stories as much as we do.

So for this week we’ll start off with the discovery of Pluto.
On February 18, 1930 Pluto was discovered at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh. Tombaugh discovered the planet by using a new astronomic technique that combined photographic plates with a blink microscope. Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld in Greek mythology. Years later, due to new rules that state planets must “clear the neighborhood around its orbit”, in August 2006 the International Astronomical Union announced that Pluto would no longer be considered a planet (Pluto’s orbit overlaps with Neptune’s).

Read more at: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pluto-discovered