In 1890, Orr moved with her family to Australia. She found there was no good guide to the southern stars, so wrote
An Easy Guide to the Southern Stars, with the encouragement of
John Tebbutt, the leading astronomer in Australia at the time. In 1895, she moved back to England and met fellow British astronomer
John Evershed when they both participated in an expedition to view a
total solar eclipse of
9 August 1896 in Norway Orr subsequently joined the
British Astronomical Association (BAA). At this time, the BAA enjoyed the membership of intellectual women barred from the (then) all-male
Royal Astronomical Society. During this time, she became friends with
Agnes Clerke and
Annie Scott Dill Maunder, both notable for their contributions to historical astronomy. Orr married Evershed in 1906. Up to this time, he had worked as an industrial chemist with solar physics as a hobby but, in 1906, was offered a post as assistant astronomer at
Kodaikanal Observatory in India. Mary and John moved to
Kodaikanal (visiting notable astronomical locations in the United States on the way) to allow him to take up the post in 1907. While in India, Mary collected plants from the region, which were ultimately deposited in the
British Museum herbarium. While at Kodaikanal, Mary completed an index to the library at the observatory. In 1909, she is recorded as measuring the position angles and heights of solar prominences from photographs taken at the observatory’s spectroheliograph. In 1915, she accompanied her husband on an astronomical expedition to Srinagar in Kashmir. In 1916, Mary was elected to the membership of the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific. On the 9 May 1924 as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Lastly, she directed the BAA’s Historical Section from its inception in 1930 to 1944. Throughout her life, Evershed travelled to numerous
solar eclipses, including
Norway in
1896,
Algiers in
1900,
Western Australia in
1922,
Yorkshire in
1927, and
Greece/
Aegean Sea in
1936. ==Dante scholarship==