In 1868 and 1871, Pogson joined the Indian solar eclipse expeditions. He received a telegram from Ernst Friedrich Wilhelm Klinkerfues on 30 November 1872 which read "Biela touched Earth on 27th. search near Theta Centauri", a message so esoteric that it caught the fancy of the newspapers of the time. Unfortunately the skies were cloudy in Madras and when it cleared up on 2 December 1872, he observed an object (recorded as &lt;a href="X/1872%20X1"&gt;X/1872 X1&lt;/a&gt;) which he believed to be a return of Biela's Comet but was later found to be a different object which has been called "Pogson's comet".