A lovely piece from Jeremy ,from the Chirotic Journal i had to share …4/2/21…

Happy Birthday, Pluto!

That’s right, Pluto will be 91 on February 18th. At least he will be 91 to the human race, because I’m pretty sure he’s at least a few years older than that. But Pluto’s birthday isn’t the only major event happening this month, indeed, there is a major astrological return occurring for the US.

And happy birthday, Clyde…

But before we get to that, let’s stick with birthdays and spare a moment to remember Clyde Tombaugh, who would have celebrated his 115th birthday today. As many of you may know, Clyde started the next stage of human spiritual evolution by discovering Pluto on February 18th, 1930.

But what is often forgotten is that Clyde’s fame, as Pluto’s discoverer, came about in a most serendipitous fashion.

As a boy, Clyde dreamed of the stars and set his heart on becoming an astronomer. But growing up on a farm in Kansas meant that when a hailstorm destroyed the family crops in 1922, he had to give up his dream of going to college and becoming an astronomer, instead he stayed on the farm and worked to rebuild the family business. He did not give up on his dream and starting in 1926, he built several telescopes with lenses and mirrors by himself. To better test his telescope mirrors, Tombaugh, with just a pick and shovel, dug a pit 24 feet long, 8 feet deep, and 7 feet wide. This provided a constant air temperature, free of air currents, and was also used by the family as a root cellar and emergency shelter.

Still passionate about the stars, he sent drawings of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory, at Flagstaff, Arizona, and they offered him a job! Now, because Clyde had no college degree, he was given the lowliest and most tedious work which meant scanning thousands of photographic plates of starfields to look for minute anomalies that might indicate the presence of Planet X, a planet whose presence had been predicted by small perturbations in the orbit of Neptune.

And the rest is history! Clyde’s persevering dream of being an astronomer was realised with immortality in his field. Following his discovery of Pluto, Tombaugh earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in astronomy from the University of Kansas in 1936 and 1938.

Apart from Pluto, Clyde discovered 15 other asteroids, some of which were named Annette, Patsy, Kathleen, Shawna and Nicky while asteroid 1604 Tombaugh is named after him.

Clyde died in 1997, but a small part of his cremated remains was placed upon the New Horizons spacecraft in 2006. Clyde finally visited his Pluto in 2015.

Thanks Clyde