George E Hale captured a photographic image of the Sun at a single wavelength of light, a monochromatic image. The wavelength is usually chosen to coincide with a spectral wavelength of one of the chemical elements present in the Sun. He photographed huge hurricanes of incandescent vapor and discovered that the whirlpools of flaming hydrogen expanded 300,000 miles from the surface of the sun. He also was the first to discover the outer surface of the sun was a gas.
Hale was a driven individual who worked to found a number of significant astronomical observatories, including Yerkes Observatory, Mount Wilson Observatory, Palomar Observatory, and the Hale Solar Laboratory. At Mount Wilson, he hired and encouraged Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble toward some of the most significant discoveries of the time. The Mt. Wilson Observatory dominated the world of astronomy in the first half of the twentieth century. Here, astronomers and physicists modernized astrophysics, confirmed what galaxies were made up of, verified the expanding universe of cosmology, and made several notes and observations about the sun. He was a prolific organizer who helped create a number of astronomical institutions, societies and journals. Hale also played a central role in developing the California Institute of Technology into a leading research university.
Hale suffered from neurological and psychological problems, including insomnia, frequent headaches, and schizophrenia, claiming to have regular visits from an elf who gave him advice on his work. George E. Hale died on February 21, 1938 in the Las Encinas Sanitarium of heart trouble. He was sixty-nine years old and currently living in Pasadena, California.
