June 29th, 1868 is the birthday of astronomer Dr. George E. Hale. Dr. Hale was credited with founding the Yerkes Observatory in Chicago and the Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain Observatories in Southern California. He also invented the spectroheliograph and first learned that the sun’s outer shell is made of gas. He photographed colossal hurricanes of incandescent vapor and discovered that the flaming whirlpools of hydrogen leaped 300,000 miles from the surface of the sun and were large enough to engulf the earth like a cinder in a furnace.
Notes for Monday – June 29, 2015
