--- title: Pluto: How it Was Discovered, Named and Demoted description: Feb. 18, 1930: Pluto is first identified in photographs of the night sky canonical: https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/ author: Jennifer Latson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-02-18T16:30:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:55.488Z article:section: History og:title: Pluto: How it Was Discovered, Named and Demoted og:description: Feb. 18, 1930: Pluto is first identified in photographs of the night sky og:url: https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1bf9148429e2cfd3/69877eb1a988ca743d6ac686/pluto.jpeg?branch=production&width=800&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 800 og:image:height: 450 og:image:alt: Pluto No Longer Classified As A Planet og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Pluto: How it Was Discovered, Named and Demoted twitter:description: Feb. 18, 1930: Pluto is first identified in photographs of the night sky twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1bf9148429e2cfd3/69877eb1a988ca743d6ac686/pluto.jpeg?branch=production&width=800&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Pluto Matters: A Short History of a Small (Non-)Planet > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Phone Home: NASA's Call Center [Watch (HLS stream): Phone Home: NASA's Call Center](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uGQRvwuW.m3u8) (3:48)  _Published 2014-01-08. NASA has been communicating with astronauts and spacecraft via the Deep Space Network for over 50 years._ by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Feb 18, 2015 4:30 PM UTC  This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra. This undated image taken by the Hubble telescope shows Pluto and its moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra. NASA / Getty Images by [Jennifer Latson](https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/) ## Jennifer Latson Feb 18, 2015 4:30 PM UTC When it was first discovered, Pluto was the coolest planet in the solar system. Before it was even named, [TIME surmised](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,738894,00.html) that “the New Planet,” 50 times farther from the sun than Earth, “gets so little heat from the sun that most substances of Earth would be frozen solid or into thick jellies.” The astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh, then a 24-year-old research assistant at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., was the first to find photographic evidence of a ninth planet on this day, Feb. 18, 85 years ago. His discovery launched a worldwide scramble to name the frozen, farthest-away planet. Since the astronomer Percival Lowell had predicted its presence 15 years earlier, per TIME, and even calculated its approximate position based on the irregularity of Neptune’s orbit, the team at Lowell Observatory considered his widow’s suggestion of “Percival,” but found it not quite planetary enough. The director of the Harvard Observatory suggested “Cronos,” the sickle-wielding son of Uranus in Greek myth. But the team opted instead for “Pluto,” the Roman god of the Underworld — the suggestion of an [11-year-old British schoolgirl](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4596246.stm) who told the BBC she was enthralled with Greek and Roman mythology. Her grandfather had read to her from the newspaper about the planet’s discovery, and when she proposed the name, he was so taken with it that he brought it to the attention of a friend who happened to be an astronomy professor at Oxford University. The Lowell team went for Pluto partly because it began with Percival Lowell’s initials. Pluto the Disney dog, it should be noted, had nothing to do with the girl’s choice. Although the cartoon character also made its first appearance in 1930, it did so shortly _after_ the planet was named, as the BBC noted. And while Pluto was [downgraded to “dwarf planet”](http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060825/news%5F1n25pluto.html) status in 2006, it remains a popular subject for astronomers. They began discovering similar small, icy bodies during the 1990s in the same region of the solar system, which has become known as the Kuiper Belt. Just because Pluto’s not alone doesn’t make it any less fascinating, [according to Alan Stern](http://time.com/3645704/pluto-new-horizons-spacecraft/), director of a NASA mission, New Horizons, that will explore and photograph Pluto in an unprecedented spacecraft flyby on July 14 of this year. “This epic journey is very much the Everest of planetary exploration,” Stern wrote in TIME last month. “Pluto was the first of many small planets discovered out there, and it is still both the brightest and the largest one known.” NASA released its first images of Pluto from the New Horizons mission earlier this month, although the probe was still 126 million miles away from its subject; the release was timed to coincide with Tombaugh’s birthday. [Stern wrote](http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/february/nasa-spacecraft-returns-new-images-of-pluto-en-route-to-historic-encounter/#.VNlkMGR4qJ4), when the pictures were released, “These images of Pluto, clearly brighter and closer than those New Horizons took last July from twice as far away, represent our first steps at turning the pinpoint of light Clyde saw in the telescopes at Lowell Observatory 85 years ago, into a planet before the eyes of the world this summer.” **_Read TIME’s original coverage of how Pluto got its name, here in the archives_**: [Percival? Cronos?](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,738894-1,00.html) ## Transcript >> On a rotating planet, a single antenna could never keep in constant contact with a space craft at any great distance. For that reason, the Deep Space Network has three sets of antennas located about 120 degrees apart around the globe; Madrid in Spain, Goldstone in California, and Canberra in Australia. At no point is the spacecraft vast in blackout. The Deep Space Network first went online in December of 1963 and has been in constant use ever since. At the moment, it's communicating with more than 30 Deep Space spacecraft. Spacecraft and human beings have been traveling to the moon for more than 50 years now and most of the images with the small exception of the ones hand carried by astronauts on traditional film were sent back through the Deep Space Network. >> Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. >> The original and iconic scenes of Neil Armstrong stepping on the surface of the Sea of Tranquility, that came through the DSN. >> That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. But I was [ unk ] -[ unk ] images of Apollo 17 taking off. >> Three, two, one, ignition. >> We're on our way, Houston. >> And the first colored broadcast from the surface of the moon. >> Okay, Houston, I'm gonna [ unk ] chamber now. >> Roger, out. >> Richard Nixon may be the only president ever to communicate by the Deep Space Network when he spoke to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the surface of the moon in July of 1969. >> Hello Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. >> Transmissions from the moon to earth take about a second and a half to get here, which is about as long as it takes light to travel to 239, 000 miles from here to there. For Mars, it's a different story. The distance between Mars and the Earth changes depending upon where they are in their orbits. And when the Curiosity Rover landed in 2012, the two planets were about 154 million miles apart, which means it took close to 14 minutes for a signal including an image to come from there to here. -[ unk ] confirmed. Proceed to Mars. >> Color images don't come in in full color. The color has to be added later as data's impact through different filters and at different frequencies is interrupted to add hues and shades to what's originally a black and white image. Over the course of time, the quality of the photographs has gotten strikingly sharper. The first images from Mars were grainy fly over shots. By the time Curiosity landed in 2012, the pictures that were coming home were in some cases almost indistinguishable from high- quality photography taken in the maizes and bad lands of the southwest. A network that was built in 1963 has been used by generations of spacecraft that couldn't even have been dreamed of back then. 50 years from now when the DSN is 100 years old, it may be the source of communications from human beings living and working on Mars. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/"},"headline":"Why Pluto Matters: A Short History of a Small (Non-)Planet","datePublished":"2015-02-18T16:30:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:59:55.488Z","description":"Feb. 18, 1930: Pluto is first identified in photographs of the night sky","url":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/","keywords":["Space","Pluto","planet"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1bf9148429e2cfd3/69877eb1a988ca743d6ac686/pluto.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jennifer Latson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jennifer-latson/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1bf9148429e2cfd3/69877eb1a988ca743d6ac686/pluto.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Pluto No Longer Classified As A Planet","caption":"Pluto No Longer Classified As A Planet","creditText":"NASA / Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/space/","name":"Space"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/","name":"Why Pluto Matters: A Short History of a Small (Non-)Planet"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Phone Home: NASA's Call Center","description":"NASA has been communicating with astronauts and spacecraft via the Deep Space Network for over 50 years.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uGQRvwuW/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-01-08T18:10:36.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uGQRvwuW.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/","duration":"PT3M48S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3705317/pluto-discovery-history/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```