Marc Buie

Planet Advocate for Pluto

My Field Journals

Perceval Lowell founded the Observatory to study Mars and search for life, but the telescopes here helped Clyde Tombaugh discover the planet Pluto ( the P and L stand for Perceval Lowell!) Marc worked at STScI in its first years, and is fully aware of what the Hubble Telescope can contribute to studies of Pluto. He plans to have new Web pages online very soon, and is working with local high school students to upgrade them.

In answer to the question, What made me want to become an astronomer anyway? Dr. Buie says:

For me, my career and what I decided to do with my life and studying Pluto, mostly, has grown out of a...childhood fascination with space ...my earliest memory is of the Mercury launch -- sitting in a dark, cold, living room, watching the TV, and I must have only been three or four years old at the time, but I can clearly remember watching the lift-off.

...and as I was growing up there was this great future that we were looking forward to. With what we were thinking, back when I was in junior high school, I figured by now we'd be on Mars. And now I would say that I am a little bit disappointed that we kind of retrenched, and we are not as far along as I think we ought to be or could be. But on the other hand I have to say that the thing that's got me... excited about science was the space program, and the exploration we were about, and doing and looking beyond the Earth, and out into the solar system. And from my earliest memories that captured my imagination and has propelled me into what I do today.