Astronomers gathered in the region of Upper Egypt around mid-May 1882 as a total eclipse of the sun was predicted to occur on the 17th. About the middle of totality (about May 17.3), a luminous streak was observed near the sun.
M. Trépied first noted the comet to the right of the sun at a zenithal angle of nearly 90°. He referred to it as "in evident discordance with the rest of the corona." He said the idea of this object being a comet did not cross his mind until he saw the first of Dr. Arthur Schuster's photographs almost an hour after the eclipse. He said, "The brightness of the comet appeared to one to be of the same order as that at the exterior parts of the corona."
Photographs taken by Schuster showed the "streak" to be a comet. Schuster and Captain W. de W. Abney (both members of an English team) said, "The nucleus is exceedingly well and sharply defined, the tail is somewhat curved; it did not point toward the sun's centre, but in a direction nearly tangential to the limb. The extent of the tail was roughly two-thirds of a solar diameter." Schuster's photograph showed the comet's nucleus situated slightly more than one solar diameter from the sun's limb.
Schuster and Abney investigated numerous photographs of this comet and noted "a slight but progressive change in the comet's position." Since the comet was measured with respect to the moon's limb, they suggested this movement was due to the motion of the moon; however, even after this was taken into account, there still remained a change in the comet's distance from the moon's center which they suggested was "probably in part due to the proper motion of the comet, which in that case must have moved away from the sun during the eclipse."
The various eclipse parties met after the eclipse and jointly agreed to name the comet "Tewfik...in recognition of the Khedive's generous hospitality."
Initial investigations suggested this comet was probably comet Wells which had been well observed during the previous couple of months; however, calculations showed Wells would not have been in the proper position and would have been much fainter. Later suggestions were made to suggest this was a member of the sungrazing family of comets. During 1967, B. G. Marsden investigated the members of the sungrazing family. For this comet he said, "The tail was curved much as would be expected for a comet very close to the sun and rapidly approaching perihelion." The probable perihelion date, based on the assumption that the comet was a sungrazer, was 1882 May 17.5. During 1989, Marsden updated his research on the sungrazing comet family. The observation was only satisfactory enough to establish a possible perihelion date of May 17.46. For the orbit he conjectured that the comet was associated with comet C/1880 C1.