With each passing year, Huggins became increasingly involved in observations requiring assistance. Until the untimely death in 1870 of his neighbour, chemist William Allen Miller, Huggins relied on him to confirm important telescopic observations and assist in spectroscopic comparisons. On occasion, he invited others to work with him at Tulse Hill. But he could not long continue as a solitary observer if he wished to maintain his position on the cutting edge of research in astronomical physics.

By the mid-1870s, he faced a growing field of able competitors in London and abroad, who vied with him for the same prize discoveries: to decipher the spectral code of the nebulae, to reduce the varieties of stellar spectra to a seemly and sensible order, to bring the full potential of the spectroscope's analytic power to bear on the solar surface and its immediate environs, and/or to be the first to observe some new as yet unimagined celestial phenomenon. He had already experienced a loss of priority to Lockyer's and Janssen's independent claims to have found a spectroscopic method for viewing solar prominences without an eclipse. He would have to work hard to ensure that he did not lose such an opportunity again.

Another difficulty gradually arose as astronomical photography became an accepted, even expected, part of the serious amateur's toolkit.