BURDETT, Kan. -- Residents gathered at the local water tower Thursday to honor Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto who began scanning the heavens more than 60 years ago from his family's farm north of town.
The residents of Burdett, population 280, dedicated a highway marker honoring Tombaugh, who was raised in Burdett and built his own telescope while he was a teenager there.
'I feel real honored that my hometown is doing this,' the quiet, 76-year-old astronomer said about the marker. Tombaugh came to Kansas from his home in Las Cruces, N.M., to attend the Pawnee County celebration.
The Lions Club, Shiley Extension Homemakers Unit and the American Legion sold meals to pheasant hunters and also peddled calendars to raise about $1,000 to pay for the aluminum-cast sign.
The marker will alert motorists on U.S. 156 that Tombaugh is the town's 'favorite son' and graduated from Burdett High School in 1925.
'During his planet search, Tombaugh photographed 65 percent of the sky and spent 7,000 hours examining about 90 million star images,' the sign says. 'Besides Pluto, his discoveries included six star clusters, one cloud of galaxies, one comet and about 775 asteroids.
'Few astronomers have seen so much of the universe in such minute detail.'
Tombaugh eventually was hired by Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Ariz., where the founder -- Dr. Percival Lowell -- had suspected that a ninth planet existed in the solar system.
