by Rod Pommier
Location: Redding, CA, USA
Date and Time: 2012-05-20, 18:27 PDT
Equipment: Celestron Super C8 Plus, Byers Fork Mount. Thousand Oaks Optical full aperture Type 2 glass solar filter. Canon 20D, ISO 800, Exposures all 1/1000 second.
Baily's Beads are areas where the Sun's photosphere shines through valleys between mountains and crater rims in some places and is completely blocked by those features in others. It occurs around the time of 2nd contact, where the moon's limb would theoretically touch the inside edge of the Sun' limb at only a single point, with continuous arcs of light on either side. However, because of the Moon's irregular topography along it's limb, we instead see a discontinous chain, or beads, of light.