This week we mark the passing of one of the greats of astronomy. His is a name not well known outside of the discipline, but people who love the skies are indebted to him for his astonishing accomplishments.

It was this week in 1938 that George Ellery Hale died of heart problems at the age of 69. But the achievements he left behind, including one local work of art, have changed our view of the cosmos forever.

Although a legitimate astronomer in his own right - the sun was his specialty - it is what he built that made all the difference in the world. He was the man behind the construction of three of the biggest telescopes of the 20th century.

In 1897 he founded the Yerkes Telescope in Wisconsin, equipping it with a monstrous 40-inch lens. In the early 1900's he built the famed observatory on Mt Wilson above Los Angeles. There the Hooker Telescope, sporting its 100-inch mirror, reigned as the supreme telescope in the world until the building of our own "Cathedral of the Heavens," the Palomar Observatory which houses the 200-inch Hale Telescope.

Hale was not just trying to build bigger telescopes just for the sake of being bigger. In astronomy, size really does matter.

Our only physical connection with the heavens is light; that is where all our information is. We need light. With a larger lens or mirror on your telescope you can gather more light, and thus more information about planets and stars and galaxies and even the exotic stuff like dark matter. So what George Ellery Hale did was nothing less than helping us see the universe.

What kind of things were accomplished at his observatories? Here's a short list:

It was at Hale's observatories that astronomers discovered we were not in the center of the Milky Way, but over in the safer suburbs of the galaxy. Moreover, it was discovered that our galaxy was not alone, but just one of a seemingly infinite number of them.

Scientists using the Hale's scopes determined that stars are born, live, and die, and that their blown-out debris give us all the elements of the Periodic Table.

Astronomers using Hale's observatories discovered that we were an expanding universe which led to the belief that the universe indeed did have a beginning. And in observing vastly distant objects called quasars it was determined that our universe did not just have a beginning, and was not just expanding, but was enormous beyond comprehension.

It was Hale's rugged determination to build these observatories that led to these worldview changing discoveries.

Want to know more? His life has been portrayed in several books and in the recent PBS documentary, The Journey to Palomar. And of course you can yourself make a sort of pilgrimage to Palomar Mountain itself and see his last work of art, one that reigned supreme up until the 1990's when bigger telescopes were finally built.

Until next time, clear skies!