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How the ninth planet came to be named


Published: Thursday, July 27, 2006


Every once in a while a science story comes along that absolutely astonishes me. Sometimes it astonishes me because it represents a giant advancement in human knowledge. And sometimes it astonishes me because it represents a giant gap in human knowledge ... specifically, mine.
Such a story is one I stumbled on this week, concerning Venetia Phair (nee Burney), an 87-year-old retired teacher in Epsom, England ... and the only person alive to have named one of the solar system's nine planets: she came up with the name Pluto for the outermost planet when she was an 11-year-old schoolgirl in Oxford.
In a January interview with NASA Public Affairs, in honour of the then-impending launch of the New Horizons spacecraft, now en route to a 2015 fly-past of Pluto, Venetia explained.
"I think it was on March 14, 1930, and I was having breakfast with my mother and my grandfather," she said. "And my grandfather read out at breakfast the great news (of the discovery of Pluto) and said he wondered what it would be called. And for some reason, I after a short pause, said, 'Why not call it Pluto?' "
Venetia was familiar with Greek and Roman legends from children books and also knew the names of the other planets. "I suppose I just though that this was a name that hadn't been used. And there it was."
Of course, lots of children say things over the breakfast table that don't make it onto a map of the heavens. Most children, however, don't have as their grandfather Falconer Madan, a retired librarian of Oxford University's Bodleian Library. Madan, impressed by Venetia's suggestion, dropped by the house of Herbert Hall Turner, a friend of his and a professor of astronomy at Oxford.
Ironically, Turner missed Madan: he was at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London where everyone was wondering what the new planet would be called. (Fortunately for Venetia, none of them came up with Pluto.)
When Turner finally heard the suggestion from Madan, he sent a telegram to the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., where Clyde Tombaugh had discovered the planet. On May 1, 1930, the name Pluto was formally adopted, not only because it was one of the few notable names from classical mythology that had yet to be used but also because the first two letters were the initials of the late Percival Lowell -- after whom the Lowell Observatory was named, and who, along with William Pickering, had predicted the existence of a planet outside Neptune's orbit, but never saw it.
Madan awarded Venetia a five-pound note. "As a grandfather, he liked to have an excuse for generosity," Venetia told the BBC. She also made sure the BBC knew that Disney's cartoon dog named Pluto had nothing to do with her suggestion: "People were repeatedly saying: 'Ah, she named it after Pluto the dog.' It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the palonet, rather than the other way round. So, one is vindicated."
The launch of the New Horizons mission has probably gotten Venetia more publicity than she received 76 years ago. "I think the newspapers were mostly occupied by the exploits of the woman pilot Amy Johnson (first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia) at the time," she told NASA. "My grandfather collected any information there was through a press agency and put it into two scrapbooks that I have, which I treasure."
Venetia recently received a badge from Johns Hopkins University and has had an asteroid and a scientific instrument named after her. But she's never seen Pluto, although she has visited the Lowell Observatory and saw the telescope through which Tombaugh first saw the planet.
It's a great story, isn't it? But perhaps I can be forgiven for not having heard of it until now.
As Venetia herself told NASA, "On the whole, it doesn't arise in conversation, and you don't just go around telling people that you named Pluto."
- Edward Willett is a Regina freelance writer. E-mail comments or questions to edward@edwardwillett.com. Read this and past columns online at www.edwardwillett.com or edwardwillett.blogspot.com.

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Last Update: Wednesday, July 26, 2006. 12:17pm (AEST)
New observations: Scientists think the planet may be warming, rather than cooling. [File photo] (ABC TV)

Pluto thought to be warming up

Astronomers at the University of Tasmania have found that the solar system's smallest planet is not getting colder as first thought and it probably does not have rings.
Dr John Greenhill has collected observations from last month's event when Pluto passed in front of a bright star, making it easier to study.
French scientists have shared the measurements they took in Tasmania that night, which indicate that the planet is unlikely to have rings.
Dr Greenhill says the results are surprising because they show Pluto is warming up.
"It looks as though the atmosphere has not changed from 2002, which is pretty surprising because we expected the atmosphere would freeze out as the planet moved further away from the Sun," he said.
"But so far, if anything, the atmosphere has gotten even denser."