PLUTO DISCOVERY ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EVENT(W7P) STARTS FEB 10TH

"ANNOUNCING"

PLUTO DISCOVERY ANNIVERSARY
W7P SPECIAL EVENT
Year Four of the 100th Anniversary 10-Year Countdown Special Event. -------------The 94th Anniversary is 10-18 February, 2024 (UTC)-----------
The Northern Arizona DX Association will be continuing with year four of the 10-year special event countdown to the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. This annual 9-day event is held each February through the 2030 anniversary. This year's event will take place February 10-18, 2024 (UTC).

Club members will be operating from Lowell Observatory and their home QTHs using the special event callsign W7P. Again, this will feature a new QSL card. The annual cards have subjects centered around Clyde Tombaugh, his discovery, the moons of Pluto, some of his early telescopes, lenses used, etc., with lots of great information.

The beautiful color certificate suitable for framing, with endorsement stickers four each year worked during the event, will be available.

Doug Tombaugh (N3PDT), Clyde Tombaugh's nephew, will be operating during the event as W7P/0 and a contact with Dough or his team counts as an additional endorsement on the certificate that can be used as a wild card for any previous year.

Club members will be operating on as many bands and modes as time and conditions permit. The annual QSL cards, the event certificate, and more can be found at www.nadxa.com

 

Lowell observatory is well worth a visit.

 

What a great operation!

After New Horizons, Pluto turned out to be a lot more interesting than anyone suspected.

 

About 19 years ago my wife who ran a hospital ward in Epsom in the UK looked after a lovely elderly lady who it was whispered by the staff that she had named the planet Pluto. My wife was somewhat sceptical and asked me. She was shocked when I asked her if the lady's name was Venetia Burney.

Venetia didn't live long enough to see New Horizon's reach Pluto and the stunning images but she did watch the liftoff of the mission on Television. She did however have an instrument named in her honour on the spacecraft and was given a model of it also.

By all accounts she was very pleasant and downplayed her role in such a momentous discovery.

 

All due respect to Neil deGrasse Tyson and the IAU; but in my heart, Pluto will always be our Solar System's 9th planet.

May 1, 1930: Pluto gets a name
On May 1 in the year 1930, 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England, received £5 for her clever suggestion of the name Pluto for a little world at the outer reaches of our solar system. At the time, Pluto was considered our solar system’s outermost and newest planet.

The story began earlier that year, when Clyde W. Tombaugh – an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona – discovered Pluto on February 18, 1930.

How Pluto got its name | Human World | EarthSky
73,
Jim

EARTH: LOVE IT
OR LEAVE IT ​

 

Was there in June of 2023! 100% agree! Worth the visit!

 

Known about Clyde Tombaugh for most of my life. I grew up in rural Livingston County, IL and went to school with a couple of his relatives. I even sold my house to one of them when I moved from Streator, IL to Springfield, MO.

 

Pluto might be small but so are other orbs circling the Sun. I'm used to thinking of it as a planet. If we send space craft for observation and flybys it must be worthy of some category. A lesser planet?
A planatoid? Ah do not know what to call it but i am glad for the special event! So I hope i work the SE.

 

It's a planet to me.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson can just go give another planetarium tour, that over-hyped docent.

 

Great post about all. It was tough to take when they demoted Pluto. Life: ruined. I can't resist commenting on how excellent it is that they used a boxing glove as a headache remedy in the photo. Clonking your head on that counterweight shaft would wreck your day.

It looks like a very fine observatory.

 

NDGT had nothing to do with the "demotion" (reclassification) of Pluto, although he supports it. If you want to blame any one person, go after Mike Brown, who pushed for a reevaluation of small solar system objects with the IAU (which did the actual reclassification) after he and his team started finding ones that appeared to be larger than Pluto.

Tyson once did an episode of "Nova" about Pluto in which he not only visited Lowell Observatory (I agree, well worth a visit!) but also Clyde Tombaugh's adopted hometown in New Mexico and his hometown in Illinois. In NM, Tyson interviewed Tombaugh's widow and children, showing great respect for Tombaugh's accomplishments. Then in Illinois, he set up a scene that made fun of his own role in promoting the reclassification. He goes into a barbershop, and the barber puts a razor to his neck and says, "So how do you feel about Pluto, Dr. Tyson?"

For the record, I grew up with Pluto as a planet and haven't fully accepted the reclassification myself, but I understand why it was done. All that quibbling aside, it's great that the NADXA is doing this decade-long event to celebrate what was indeed a major accomplishment in astronomy!

 

Acquiescence is guilt.

 

If I remember correct, she was a 11 year old kid when the name she suggested through her teacher got selected as the official name!

 

I think it is designated as 'Dwarf planet' currently.