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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