George O. Abell

George Ogden Abell (March 1, 1927 – October 7, 1983) was an astronomer at UCLA. 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 under Donald Osterbrock. He began his astronomical career as a tour guide at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

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. He also discovered how cluster luminosity could be used as a distance scale. He also collated a famous list of 86 planetary nebulae in 1966 which includes Abell 39.

The Abell catalogue is an almost complete list of approximately 4,000 clusters containing at least thirty members up to a redshift 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 52P/Harrington-Abell. Together with Peter Goldreich, he correctly determined that planetary nebulae evolve from red giants.

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