Called "an exceptional man" by his benefactor Andrew Carnegie, astronomer George Ellery Hale (1868-1938) was born in Chicago, Illinois and spent his life dedicated to creating bigger and better telescopes.

"More light!" he celebrated, a lover of the sun.

More light, indeed... With passion, he established three of the world's greatest observatories. The first one, Wisconsin's Yerkes Observatory, featured a 40-inch Clark refractor, which at the time (1904) was the world's largest.

He did the same with first the 60-inch, then 100-inch, telescopes at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California (1904-1923).

"Noble instrument," he said of his beloved telescope. "Noble instrument!"

In 1928, the visionary scientist directed the creation of the 200-inch reflector, the largest in the world for 30 years, at California's Mt. Palomar. This Hale Telescope began viewing the skies in 1948. In 1970, the sites at both Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar were named The Hale Observatories in honor of the man who created them.

A sparkplug in the development of modern astrophysics, Hale co-founded the Astrophysical Journal (1895) and invented the spectroheliograph (1891), an instrument to photograph the surface of the sun.

Look to the stars for inspiration.