[5] During the course of the twentieth century, the observatory fell out of use for astronomical purposes and after the Second World War its telescope, parts of which dated to the 1860s, was sold.

[6] See: Stonyhurst Refractor The observatory is currently run by Classics master Fintan O'Reilly, who also teaches GCSE astronomy.

During the mid-nineteenth century, Fathers Weld, Perry and Sidgreaves, broadened the scope of the observatory's operations to include astronomy, geomagnetrometry and seismology.

In 1858, the observatory was chosen as one of the main observing stations by General Sir Edward Sabine, when he was conducting a magnetic survey of England.

In 1866, the latter installed a set of self-recording photographic magnetographs, donated by the Royal Society, in a specially constructed underground chamber.

Sidgreaves also carried out original research into the solar spectrum, contained in many papers published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

In work carried out between 1881 and 1898, he came to the conclusion that although magnetic storms were not directly a result of sunspots, they were due to clouds of electrified particles moving between the Sun and Earth.

In 1848, the year in which Sidgreaves first attended the College, the Italian astronomer, Father Angelo Secchi, of the Jesuit Collegio di Romano Observatory, in Rome, had stayed at Stonyhurst, in retreat from revolutionary troubles in Italy.

The Earth doesn't orbit precisely around the Sun's equator, so through the year the center of solar pictures moves up and down a little more than 7 degrees.