Q 01/05

Who discovered Pluto in 1930?

A) Clyde Tombaugh

B) Edwin Hubble

C) Percival Lowell

D) William Herschel

Answer · why

A) Clyde Tombaugh

Clyde Tombaugh was a Kansas farm boy with no degree who won his observatory job by sending in sketches of the planets made with a telescope he had bui...

Q 02/05

What device did Pluto's discoverer use to spot it shifting between two photographic plates?

A) A photometer

B) A blink comparator

C) A coronagraph

D) A spectroscope

Answer · why

B) A blink comparator

A blink comparator flips rapidly between two photographs of the same patch of sky, so the stars stay put while anything that has moved appears to jump...

Q 03/05

Pluto was discovered in 1930 at an observatory in which US state?

A) Colorado

B) Arizona

C) Texas

D) Hawaii

Answer · why

B) Arizona

Arizona: Percival Lowell had built his observatory at Flagstaff in 1894 to study Mars, and its staff were still hunting his predicted 'Planet X' when ...

Q 04/05

Who first suggested the name Pluto?

A) Percival Lowell's widow Constance

B) The astronomer who found it

C) An 11-year-old English schoolgirl

D) A Walt Disney animator

Answer · why

C) An 11-year-old English schoolgirl

An 11-year-old English schoolgirl, Venetia Burney of Oxford, offered the name over breakfast; her grandfather passed it to an astronomer friend, who c...

Q 05/05

Pluto's traditional planetary symbol is a monogram of which two letters?

A) P and T

B) P and L

C) P and O

D) P and U

Answer · why

B) P and L

P and L: they open the name Pluto and are also the initials of Percival Lowell, who began the hunt for a ninth planet, a coincidence that helped the n...