He was elected professor of physics at Owens College, Manchester, and retained that chair until his death, which happened near Drogheda, in Ireland, on 19 December 1887.

In 1870, the year in which he was very seriously injured in a railway accident, he was elected professor of physics at Owens College, Manchester, and retained that chair until his death, which happened near Drogheda, in Ireland, on 19 December 1887.

In conjunction with Professor P. G. Tait he wrote The Unseen Universe, at first published anonymously, which was intended to combat the common notion of the incompatibility of science and religion.

It appears that we have two distinct well-marked disturbances, each commencing abruptly and ending gradually, the first of which began on the evening of August 28 and the second on the early morning of September 2.

At the 11 November 1859 meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, Richard Carrington presented a paper[7] describing his observations of the super flare that occurred on 1 September, at 11:18 GMT and later named in his honor.

(Mr. Carrington exhibited at the November Meeting of the Society a complete diagram of the disk of the sun at the time, and copies of the photographic records of the variations of the three magnetic elements, as obtained at Kew, and pointed out that a moderate but very marked disturbance took place at about 11h 20m A.M., Sept. 1st, of short duration; and that towards four hours after midnight there commenced a great magnetic storm, which subsequent accounts established to be considerable in the southern as in the northern hemisphere.

“One swallow does not make a summer.”)From this addendum, it is clear that Richard Carrington was not willing to commit professionally to connecting the magnetic disturbance with the event he had observed on the surface of the Sun even though they occurred at nearly identical times.

Carrington happened to be observing, by means of a telescope, a large spot which might then be seen on the surface of our luminary, when a remarkable appearance presented itself, which he described in communications to the Royal Astronomical Society.

This disturbance occurred as nearly as possible at 11h 15m A.M. Greenwich mean time, on September 1, 1859, affecting all the elements simultaneously, and commencing quite abruptly.This small, short-duration, disturbance described by Stewart is now understood to be due to a rapid ionization increase and resultant electric currents in the ionosphere due to intense X-ray radiation from the solar flare.

The resulting geomagnetic disturbance from the ionospheric currents occurs nearly simultaneously with the photon arrivals and lasts only for as long as the flare X-ray flux continues to ionize the upper atmosphere.

Stewart reported that the first geomagnetic storm began at 22:30 GMT on the evening of 28 August 1859, as recorded by self-recording magnetographs at the Kew Observatory.