it's a tale that begins back in 1894 when a new england aristocrat by the name of percival lowell built a private observatory near flagstaff, arizona, with one goal in mind: to find life on mars. after years of searching in vain, lowell turned his attention to an unsolved mystery: the hunt for a distant planet whose gravity seemed to be causing disturbances in neptune's orbit. he called this hypothetical object planet x. lowell spent the rest of his life trying to find it but never did. after his death, the task was given to the unlikeliest of planet hunters, a self-educated farm boy who attended a one-room schoolhouse. clyde tombaugh's first job in astronomy included cleaning telescopes and sweeping up at the lowell observatory. he spent the rest of his time searching for the mysterious planet x. every few nights he placed a photosensitive glass plate on the telescope securing it so it would not shift. then he exposed the plate for two hours to the universe. during that time the motorized telescope slowly moved to compensate for earth's rotation. several days later he'd retrace his ste