A cartoon drawing of what Hale might have looked like as he gazed through his telescope.
George Hale
George Hale was an American astronomer born in 1868. Even as a child, Hale was interested in the
stars. When George was young, his father even built him his own observatory in the backyard.
After attending college, Hale volunteered at Harvard College's Observatory. While working at the observatory, he invented an instrument called the spectrohelioscope. A spectrohelioscope is a combination of a telescope and a spectroscope. It is used to measure
the chemicals that make up the stars.
George Hale then set up many observatories across the nation including the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California. He is also known for developing the field of Astrophysics. George Hale passed away in 1938.
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