Worlds Revealed Speaker Series | Perturbation? Prediction, Photographs and the search for Planet X

Perturbation? Prediction, Photographs and the search for Planet X with Dr. Stephen Levine

What did it take to find a new planet 96 years ago? And what else can we learn and do, even today, with those original search photographs and observations?

This talk will explore what might have prompted Percival Lowell to seek a planet out beyond Neptune. Progress in mathematics and computing combined with better telescopes and the relatively new photographic plate made possible large scale searches for things that moved across the sky. The technical advances alone were not enough; success required a degree of attention to detail and dedication as brought by researchers like Clyde Tombaugh.

Many of the techniques used are still in use today in digital form. As we now digitize those original photographic images from 80 to 120 years ago, we are finding new ways that they can help advance scientific studies and exploration of our solar system and the stars in our galaxy today. For example, NASA had photographic plates taken at Lowell in the 1930s and 1940s scanned to help improve the trajectory for the New Horizons mission fly-by of Pluto in 2015.