NATS 1745 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Selection Bias, Clyde Tombaugh, Radial Velocity
8 Sep 2017
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Part 1: overview of solar system + pluto: in our own solar system, around other stars. By accident, he was just sweeping his telescope across the sky, and noticed its movement was like a planet. Used physics to infer the existence of a new planet. 3 main people who looked for it: percival lowell. Thought neptune"s positions were not predicted very well by newton"s laws. Thought there must be another planet past neptune. Searched: 1915-18 (pretty sure it was actually 1914-16 though: william henry pickering. He was the guy that headed up the computers" at the harvard observatory. Used a new technique to find pluto. Used lowell"s telescope at lowell observatory in arizona. Had 2 images: one on left, one on right. Mirror in the middle that could switch between the 2 images really quickly. Able to easily spot something that changes from one image to the next. Notices one star" moved over a couple days.
