How did Pluto form (is it an asteroid or a planet?) Written by
Edo Loenen and Marco Westerkamp. Pluto was discovered in 1930 by
Clyde W. Tombaugh, who used a 33-cm photographic telescope at
Lowell Obersvatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The search for Pluto
at Flagstaff had been initiated by the founder of the
obervatory, Percival Lowell, who had estimated the ninth
planet's position on the basis off its presumed gravitational
pull on Uranus and Neptune. Scientist now know, however, that
the mass of Pluto is insufficient to affect the orbits of Uranus
and Neptune. The fact that Pluto was found relatively close to
the position that had been predicted by Lowell was due to luck.
After the discovery of Pluto, it was quickly determined that
Pluto was too small to account for the discrepancies in the
orbits of the other planets. The search for Planet X continued
but nothing is found yet. To answer the question about the
formation of Pluto , it is necessary to know what Pluto is.
Because the formation of a planet is diff