Wowed by Pluto at Lowell Observatory

Lowell Observatory Director Jeffrey Hall was amazed by the images of Pluto released Wednesday — and bowled over by the announcement that the planet’s largest heart-shaped region would be named the “Tombaugh Regio.”

Hall watched the NASA news feed from a computer in his office — the same office where Clyde Tombaugh had told Lowell Director Vesto Slipher in 1930 that he had found “Planet X.”

“Oh my goodness. Wow. Oh my gosh. Whoa,” Hall said as the announcement was made.

Hall is justly proud of his observatory’s legacy, built partly on Tombaugh’s discovery of Pluto, but he is also quick to note that its principal mission is science. When the panel of five scientists on the New Horizons mission was introduced Wednesday, he bragged that three of them had Lowell connections.

John Spencer, co-investigator and deputy of the geology and geophysics team on New Horizons, was a postdoctoral research associate at Lowell from 1991 to 2004.

Cathy Olkin, one of the mission’s deputy project scientists, was a postdoctoral research associate at the observatory from 1996 to 2004.

Lowell astronomer Will Grundy leads the surface composition science team on New Horizons.

They are not the only Lowell alums supporting the NASA mission to Pluto — testament to the fact that the observatory has been intimately involved in Pluto science since 1930.

That kind of research will be rejuvenated by New Horizons, said Hall. On Wednesday, after seeing “just this tiny fraction of the surface” released by NASA, he said: “Just think of the number of new questions it’s going to raise.”

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Asking and answering questions about Pluto is a big part of Lowell’s history and its current science program.

About 80,000 people tour the Lowell grounds each year to view its historic and scientific exhibits and to tour the grounds dotted with telescope domes of volcanic rock and wood, some rolling on truck tires.

Lowell’s teams of educators and outreach specialists were in big demand this week as it broke records for visitors, including about 1,500 who visited Tuesday, awaiting the signal that New Horizons had successfully completed its mission.

Hall addressed the crowd after that signal had been received. He marveled that you could fling a tiny spacecraft into space for a 3 billion-mile voyage and arrive at your destination.

New Horizons went screaming through the middle of the Pluto system at 31,000 mph, he said.

Success was not guaranteed.

That process of risky exploration is a continuing element of human endeavor, he said. You use the best technology of the time to stretch its boundaries — from the three-masted schooners that brought people to the New World to NASA’s exploration of the solar system.

“Science is always stepping right at the edge of discovery,” he said.