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Venetia Katharine Douglas Burney (married name Phair, 11 July 1918 – 30 April 2009) was an English accountant and teacher. She is remembered as the first person to suggest the name Pluto for the dwarf planet discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. At the time, she was 11 years old.
Clyde William Tombaugh (/ ˈ t ɒ m b aʊ /; February 4, 1906 – January 17, 1997) was an American astronomer.He discovered Pluto in 1930, the first object to be discovered in what would later be identified as the Kuiper belt.
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest known trans-Neptunian object by volume, by a small margin, but is less massive than Eris.
Clyde Tombaugh's discovery of Pluto in 1930 appeared to validate Lowell's hypothesis, and Pluto was officially named the ninth planet. In 1978, Pluto was conclusively determined to be too small for its gravity to affect the giant planets, resulting in a brief search for a tenth planet.
In June 2006 the student dust counter was named in honor of Venetia Phair (née Burney) who came up with the name Pluto in the 1930s as a girl, and she was given a plaque related to this naming in December, 2006. [11] Venetia suggested the name Pluto after the discovery of the new planet by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 at Lowell Observatory. [12]
The heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio, on Pluto, is named after the planet's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh. A map of the Moon from Andrees Allgemeiner Handatlas , 1st edition (1881), predating IAU conventions IAU approval procedure
Madan passed the name to Turner, who cabled it to colleagues at the Lowell Observatory in the United States. [8] The new planet was officially named "Pluto" on 24 March 1930. [9] His portrait, by Catharine Dodgson, hangs at New College, Oxford, at which he held a Professorial Fellowship attached to the Savilian Professor of Astronomy.
As with the rest of Pluto's surface features, Burney was first seen on the New Horizons flyby of Pluto and its five moons on 14 July 2015. The impact basin was informally named Burney by the New Horizons team in honor of Venetia Burney, who suggested the name Pluto to the dwarf planet's discoverer Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.