So great was his interest in the night sky that once after Taps, he crawled out on the roof of Bancroft Hall to look for the Constellation Draco and was caught by an officer who gave him five hours of extra duty for not being in bed.

[3][4] As a protege of Gordon Newkirk, Eddy worked with Princeton Professor Martin Schwarzschild in studying the solar corona with coronagraphs mounted on stratospheric balloons at altitudes of 80,000 feet (24,000 m).

Eddy completed his PhD Thesis at the University of Colorado at Boulder in December 1961 titled "The Stratospheric Solar Aureole".

[3] Eddy received much criticism from within the astronomy community for his interdisciplinary work on Native American medicine wheels, which showed how they were used as calendars and observatories.

[6] It also earned him criticism from archaeologists at first, although his work was eventually accepted, and later documented in National Geographic and as a guest on TV and radio programs.

Eugene Parker of the University of Chicago, when promoting his theory of the existence of a solar wind, exposed Eddy to Maunder's work on sunspot records.

Both the Maunder and Spörer minima fell during the coldest parts of the Little Ice Age, which suggested a connection between the longer term behavior of the Sun and of the Earth's mean surface temperature.

[citation needed] The interest resulting from "The Maunder Minimum" paper saw him giving over 50 talks a year around the world about his work and history.