The New York Times - The Universe TV - Mike Brown - Horizon TV - Solar Empire TV - Carl Sagan - Neil deGrasse Tyson - How the Universe Works TV - The Year of Pluto 2015 - Brian Cox TV -
Ninth Planet Discovered on Edge of Solar System; First Found in 84 Years: Lies Far Beyond Neptune. The New York Times front page March 1930
In 1930 at the age of twenty-four Tombaugh captured an image of an object that seemed to validate Lowell’s predictions. The discovery was announced to the world. The Universe s1e11: The Outer Planets, History 2007
Even though Pluto wasn’t Planet X could it still be classified as a planet? ibid.
At its closest Pluto is 2.7 billion miles from Earth. ibid.
Would Eris officially become our tenth planet? Or would Pluto-sized objects be reclassified as a whole? ibid.
Our Solar System now officially consists of eight planets. ibid.
Scientific interest in Pluto hasn’t waned. Even as the vote was being taken in Prague a Nasa spacecraft called New Horizons was already on its way to exploring this far off world. ibid.
Pluto had it coming for a long time. Mike Brown, interview The Universe: The Outer Planets
Pluto is only about twice the size of Charon, so if you put Pluto and Charon on the cosmic seesaw you would find that the balance point is a little bit outside Pluto, rather than inside it. Again, there is nothing particularly special going on there. If you were to find yourself at that precise spot, you would only notice that you were very, very cold and could no longer breathe. Mike Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming
The time may have come to say goodbye to Planet Pluto. Horizon: Bye Bye Planet Pluto, BBC 2006
Dr Tyson ignored the outcry. He was convinced Pluto didn’t deserve the privilege of planethood. ibid.
Three and a half billion miles from Earth, beyond Jupiter, Saturn, past Uranus and Neptune hides Pluto and its five moons. Discovered in 1930, for decades we knew almost nothing about it. So in 2006 Nasa launched a rocket carrying a lightweight probe. Spacecraft returned the first ever close-up images of Pluto’s surface. And sent our understanding of this icy world in disarray. This was not a lifeless rock we once thought. Horizon: Pluto: Back from the Dead, BBC 2020
The probe was called New Horizons, and it would take more than nine years to make the three and a half billion mile voyage to Pluto. ibid.
These mountains were made from ice, not rock … A world of puzzling complexity … Pluto had an atmosphere … made mostly of nitrogen gas. ibid.
Beyond Neptune lay Planet X, predicted but unseen. In 1930 a young Kansas farm boy Clyde Tombaugh was working at the Lowell Observatory ... For more than a year Tomber exposed photographic plates ... Solar Empire: A Star is Born, Discovery 1997
It is a discovery by traditional astronomical methods in this century of a new planet – that’s an important discovery probably of a class of whole new worlds. Professor Carl Sagan
For more than seventy-five years the great stage of our solar system had a familiar cast of characters ... Perhaps the most popular player of all – a lonely little misfit – planet Pluto. But recently Pluto lost its starring role and some folks are blaming that on me! Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Pluto Files
Little did I know how this decision would change my life. ibid.
Pluto makes a scrawnier little planet. ibid.
The fledgling Disney Brothers studio came up with a new character – a playful bloodhound named Pluto the pup. ibid.
Beyond the outermost planet there’s a swarm of tens of thousands of frozen worlds. And Pluto is one of them. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey I: Standing Up in the Milky Way, National Geographic 2014
If you slid Pluto to where Earth is right now, heat from the sun would evaporate that ice, and it would grow a tail. Now that’s no kind of behaviour for a planet. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Pluto: for such a long time a mystery but then these astounding and revealing images rocked science. Ice volcanoes, fast-flowing glaciers and mountain ranges as big as the Rockies … In 2015 Pluto was finally revealed to the world. But does its greatest secret lie deep below the surface? How the Universe Works s5e4: Secret History of Pluto, Science 2017
The ice basin appeared to be boiling … A vast heart-shaped icy plain … Steady flow of fresh nitrogen … Where is the heat coming from? ibid.
There’s a mysterious zone far out in our solar system. It’s a region of ice worlds, some solitary, some with moons … and the first of these worlds … is the king of the Kuiper Belt: Pluto. The Year of Pluto: New Horizons, 2015
July 14th 2015 New Horizons … in one day of close approach and flyby. ibid.
Two more moons, making the current total of five, and that Pluto is a genuine mini-planetary system … Perhaps 70% rock and 30% ice. ibid.
New Horizons’ velocity and launch was the fastest ever travelling almost sixty times faster than a jet liner. ibid.
New Horizons 2006, fastest probe ever launched. Fight time to Pluto: 9.5 years … A controversy arose here on Earth about the definition of Pluto itself … that challenged its status as a planet. Brian Cox, The Planets V: Into the Darkness: Ice Worlds, BBC 2019