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Did you Know? Pluto was first discovered by a young research assistant in 1930
Clyde Tombaugh, a 24-year-old research assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, was the first to spot photographic evidence of the former eighth planet. The ashes of Tombaugh are on board the New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto on Tuesday. Pluto's existence was predicted 15 years before Tombaugh's discovery, with astronomer Percival Lowell even calculating its approximate position based on the irregularity of Neptune's orbit.