February 18 was the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto (in 1930), and thanks to the efforts of the outreach staff at the Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was found, the media have been calling it “Pluto Day” and urging celebrations and discussion. In San Francisco, I got a call from KGO radio (the city’s talk show station, where I am a regular guest) to come on and talk about the discovery and “demotion” of Pluto. You can hear the half-hour discussion at:

https://omny.fm/shows/the-pat-thurston-show/february-18-2022-pat-thurston-pluto-day

My segment starts at 19:00 minutes in and you can put your cursor over the waves and just click when that time shows.

I got to know Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, a little bit, late in his life, and got him to write up the “behind the scenes” story of how he found that icy world for a magazine I was editing. You can see the story at:

http://bit.ly/tombaugh

Our photo, taken in the 1980’s, shows me with Clyde Tombaugh during a meeting of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.