His scientific life may be said to have closed with them. Attacked four years later with severe, and, in its results, permanent illness, he disposed of the Brentford business, and withdrew to Churt, near Farnham, in Surrey. There, in a lonely spot, on the top of a detached conical hill known as the "Devil's Jump," he built a second observatory, and erected an instrument which he was no longer able to use with pristine effectiveness; and there, November 27, 1875, he died of the rupture of a blood vessel on the brain, before he had completed his fiftieth year.[411]
His observations of sun-spots were of a geometrical character. They concerned positions and movements, leaving out of sight physical peculiarities. Indeed, the prudence with which he limited his task to what came strictly within the range of his powers to accomplish, was one of Carrington's most valuable qualities. The method of his observations, moreover, was chosen with the same practical sagacity as their objects. As early as 1847, Sir John Herschel had recommended the daily self-registration of sun-spots,[412] and he enforced the suggestion, with more immediate prospect of success, in 1854.[413] The art of celestial photography, however, was even then in a purely tentative stage, and Carrington wisely resolved to waste no time on dubious experiments, but employ the means of registration and measurement actually at his command. These were very simple, yet very effective. To the "helioscope" employed by Father Scheiner[414] two centuries and a quarter earlier, a species of micrometer was added. The image of the sun was projected upon a screen by means of a firmly-clamped telescope, in the focus of which were placed two cross-wires forming angles of 45° with the meridian. The six instants were then carefully noted at which these were met by the edges of the disc as it traversed the screen, and by the nucleus of the spot to be measured.[415] A short process of calculation then gave the exact position of the spot as referred to the sun's centre.
From a series of 5,290 observations made in this way, together with a great number of accurate drawings, Carrington derived conclusions of great importance on each of the three points which he had proposed to himself to investigate. These were: the law of the sun's rotation, the existence and direction of systematic currents, and the distribution of spots on the solar surface.