Charles E. Burton

The following year, he went on the expedition to Augusta (also Austa/Agosta), Sicily, to observe the total solar eclipse of 22 December, and he read his paper about the event on 13 February 1871 to the Royal Irish Academy.

[3] His observations of the transit led him to suggest that the fuzzy limb apparent in the imaging of Venus was evidence of a planetary atmosphere.

[6] Burton also provided the first scientific evidence of clouds on Mars, in notes from 5 January 1880, which he attributed to ground mists and the long exposure of the ice at the south pole to the Sun's energy.

[5] Preparations for further British expeditions to watch the next transit of Venus (1882), this time to Durban, Cape Colony, and to set up a permanent observatory,[7] interrupted Burton's experiments at lunar photography.

Weeks into this preparation, he succumbed to the heart disease at the root of his poor constitution, suffering a fatal heart-attack in the church at Castleknock, on Sunday 9 July 1882.

[3] Despite his sickly nature, some attributed his early death to repeated exposure to cold nights while observing the heavens.