William Huggins's work on solar prominences, and his expedition's failure to observe the eclipse of 1870, encouraged him to attempt a bold plan for photographing the solar corona without an eclipse. His initial impression of success in this project led him to pursue it for many years with great interest and drive. The inconclusiveness of his results tested the strength of his persuasive power and encouraged him to try to build an international network of confirmatory witnesses. The evidence Huggins believed he needed to argue successfully for the validity of his method was not forthcoming. Nevertheless, his correspondence contains the details of the verbal and visual rhetorical process by which he was able, as a relative outsider to solar observation, to shape the development of methods of observation in the emerging discipline of solar research, the types of questions being asked about the solar atmosphere, the kind and form of observation that counted as real and conclusive evidence, and finally the direction in which solar observation was taken by the growing network of solar observers up to the turn of the century.

The Egyptian eclipse

Despite growing threats of local unrest in Egypt, Arthur Schuster travelled to that country in May 1882 to observe a total solar eclipse.