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WHO DISCOVERED " PLUTO " ?
On February 18, 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh, an assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, discovered Pluto. For over seven decades, Pluto was considered the ninth planet of our solar system.

The name Pluto was chosen on March 24, 1930 after 11-year-old Venetia Burney in Oxford, England suggested the name "Pluto." The name denotes both the assumed unfavorable surface conditions (as Pluto was the Roman god of the underworld) and also honors Percival Lowell, as Lowell's initials make up the first two letters of the planet's name.

In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially created a definition of what makes a planet; Pluto did not meet all the criteria. Pluto was then downgraded from a "planet" to a "dwarf planet."


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