George Ogden Abell
Encyclopedia
George Ogden Abell was an astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

 at UCLA
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

. He worked as a research astronomer, teacher, administrator, popularizer of science and education, and skeptic. Abell received his B.S. (1951), M.S. (1952) and Ph.D. (1957) from the California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

. He began his astronomical career as a tour guide at the Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory
Griffith Observatory is in Los Angeles, California, United States. Sitting on the south-facing slope of Mount Hollywood in L.A.'s Griffith Park, it commands a view of the Los Angeles Basin, including downtown Los Angeles to the southeast, Hollywood to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest...

 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.

Work

His best known work was his catalogue of clusters of galaxies collected during the Palomar Sky Survey. He analyzed their formation and evolution. He demonstrated that second-order clustering existed, disproving the hierarchical model of Carl Charlier
Carl Charlier
Carl Vilhelm Ludwig Charlier was a Swedish astronomer.He received his Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1887, later worked there and at the Stockholm Observatory and was Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory at Lund University from 1897.He made extensive statistical studies of the...

. He also discovered how cluster luminosity
Luminosity
Luminosity is a measurement of brightness.-In photometry and color imaging:In photometry, luminosity is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to luminance, which is the density of luminous intensity in a given direction. The SI unit for luminance is candela per square metre.The luminosity function...

 could be used as a distance scale. He also collated a famous list of 86 planetary nebulae in 1966 which includes Abell 39
Abell 39
Abell 39 is a low surface brightness planetary nebula in the constellation of Hercules. It is the 39th entry in George Abell's 1966 Abell Catalog of Planetary Nebulae of 86 old planetary nebulae which either Abell or Albert George Wilson discovered before August 1955 as part of the National...

.

The Abell catalogue
Abell catalogue
The Abell catalog of rich clusters of galaxies is an all-sky catalog of 4,073 rich galaxy clusters of nominal redshift z 18.0*Galactic-Latitude: Areas of the sky in the neighbourhood of the Milky Way were excluded from the study because the density of stars in those fields—not to mention...

 is an almost complete list of approximately 4,000 clusters containing at least thirty members up to a redshift
Redshift
In physics , redshift happens when light seen coming from an object is proportionally increased in wavelength, or shifted to the red end of the spectrum...

 of z = 0.2. (See List of galaxy clusters.) The original catalogue of clusters in the northern hemisphere was published in 1958. The extended catalogue, including clusters in the southern hemisphere, was published posthumously in 1989 in collaboration with Harold G. Corwin and Ronald P. Olowin.

Abell also co-discovered periodic comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...

 52P/Harrington-Abell
52P/Harrington-Abell
52P/Harrington–Abell is a periodic comet in our solar system.It was discovered by Robert G. Harrington and George O. Abell in 1955 on plates from the Palomar Sky Survey taken with the 49-inch Samuel Oschin telescope....

. Together with Peter Goldreich
Peter Goldreich
Peter Goldreich is an American astrophysicist whose research focuses on celestial mechanics, planetary rings, helioseismology and neutron stars. He is currently the Lee DuBridge Professor of Astrophysics and Planetary Physics at California Institute of Technology. Since 2005 he has also been a...

, he correctly determined that planetary nebulae evolve from red giants.

Abell was passionate about educating young people, serving for over twenty years as a faculty member at the Summer Science Program
Summer Science Program
The Summer Science Program is an intense six-week summer program for intellectually talented high school students. The program is based on a collaborative research project in celestial mechanics. Students study astronomy, physics, spherical trigonometry, and calculus while working to take...

 for high school students. The program memorializes him with its Abell Scholarship Fund. He was involved in the production of the educational TV series Understanding Space and Time and Project Universe.

Abell was also passionate about debunking pseudoscientific claims such as those by Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...

. He was a co-founder of the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and contributed articles to their journal, The Skeptical Inquirer.

Abell served as president of the Cosmology Commission of the International Astronomical Union
International Astronomical Union
The International Astronomical Union IAU is a collection of professional astronomers, at the Ph.D. level and beyond, active in professional research and education in astronomy...

 and as president and member of the board of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
Astronomical Society of the Pacific
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...

. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society
Royal Astronomical Society
The Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...

 in 1970. He was chairman of the UCLA Astronomy Department from 1968 to 1975 and chairman of the American Astronomical Society
American Astronomical Society
The American Astronomical Society is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC...

 Education Committee. At the time of his death, he was to have become editor of the Astronomical Journal
Astronomical Journal
The Astronomical Journal is a peer-reviewed monthly scientific journal owned by the American Astronomical Society and currently published by Institute of Physics Publishing. It is one of the premier journals for astronomy in the world...

effective January 1, 1984.

Asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 3449 Abell
3449 Abell
3449 Abell is a main belt asteroid discovered on November 7, 1978 by Helin, E. F. and Bus, S. J. at Palomar.-Notes:Named for astronomer George O. Abell, who taught for many years at the Summer Science Program, which teaches astronomy to high school students using an asteroid observation...

 is named in his honor, as is The George Abell Observatory at the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...

 in Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

Obituaries


See also

  • List of Abell clusters
  • Abell catalogue
    Abell catalogue
    The Abell catalog of rich clusters of galaxies is an all-sky catalog of 4,073 rich galaxy clusters of nominal redshift z 18.0*Galactic-Latitude: Areas of the sky in the neighbourhood of the Milky Way were excluded from the study because the density of stars in those fields—not to mention...


:Category:Abell objects
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