About

This page is dedicated to the memory and story of Clyde Tombaugh, the farm boy turned astronomer who peered into the cold reaches of the outer solar system to find what others had missed. His life was a masterclass in American grit, from digging his own underground laboratory in the Kansas dirt to hand-grinding telescope mirrors from salvaged car parts. Though he is immortalized as the discoverer of Pluto, his legacy is far broader: he was a pioneer of rocket tracking at White Sands, a dedicated educator who shaped generations of scientists at New Mexico State University, and a man whose curiosity was so boundless that he eventually journeyed to the edge of the solar system aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. Through this research, we celebrate a man who proved that with enough determination, even a “speck of light” can change the world.