Despite tremendous progress in the 65 years since a possible interstellar “galactic corona” was first postulated, the study of warm-hot galactic atmospheres—now commonly referred to as the circumgalactic medium (CGM)—remains one of the last great baryonic frontiers in our developing census of the Universe.  In this talk, I first highlight how a deeper observational understanding of the physical and dynamical properties of the CGM can help answer fundamental questions in galaxy/AGN evolution and cosmology.  I then describe and present recent discoveries from a new instrument that we have developed, the Circumgalactic H-alpha Spectrograph (CHaS). CHaS is designed to obtain ultra-deep, velocity-resolved, emission-line maps of the CGM and gaseous outskirts of nearby galaxies. CHaS also complements the exploration space of other wide-field emission-line surveys from ground and space (including SDSS-V, Dragonfly, and SPHEREx).  Lastly, I briefly detail future plans for CHaS and other projects, including the stratospheric mission FIREBall-2, and close with some thoughts on how present theory and observations might evolve once the circumgalactic bubble finally comes into view.