Somewhat surprisingly, Fraunhofer's great discoveries in astronomical spectroscopy were not followed up in any detail until 1863, almost 40 years later,when a number of independent investigators, Giovanni Donati (1826–1873) in Florence, Rutherfurd in New York, George Airy (1801–1892) at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Huggins in London and Secchi in Rome, began the systematic study of the spectra of the stars and nebulae.

William Huggins – the founder of stellar astrophysics

William Huggins (1824–1910) was inspired to take up astronomical spectroscopy on reading Kirchhoff 's great papers of 1861 to 1863 on the chemical composition of the solar atmosphere. In his words,

This news came to me like the coming upon a spring of water in a dry and thirsty land. Here, at last presented itself the very order of work for which in an indefinite way I was looking for – namely, to extend his novel methods of research upon the Sun to the other heavenly bodies.

Huggins was an inspired amateur astronomer who had no formal university training in the sciences, but from 1856 until his death in 1910 he supported himself by his private income and dedicated his efforts to the advance of astrophysics. Much of his early work was carried out in collaboration with William Miller (1817–1870), who was professor of chemistry at King's College London and an expert on spectral analysis, as well as being his friend and neighbour at Tulse Hill in London.