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. He grew up in a
wealthy family and had always been interested in science and the
stars. When George was young, his father even built him his own
observatory in his backyard.
After attending college, he 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, and it is used to measure
the chemicals that compose planets and stars.
George Hale then set up
many observatories across the nation, including the Yerkes Observatory in
Wisconsin and the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California. Hale is also
known for creating the field of Astrophysics. In the early 1900, he asked
Andrew Carnegie for research money to analyze planets and stars from both
astronomical and physical perspectives. From this research, George Hale
became one of the pioneers of Astrophysics. George Hale passed away in
1938.
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