Bailys Beads

On the 8th of April there was a Total Solar Eclipse that crossed the Pacific Ocean off Mexico, traversed the USA, into Canada, before setting over the Atlantic Ocean. After switching plans based on the last minute weather reports, I decided on Vermont instead of Dallas. While totally overcast in the few days before the eclipse, there were clear skies all day, right up to the eclipse. Some slight high thin cloud did pass by just before the totality, but thankfully this was not enough to prevent spectacular views of the Corona.

The eclipse lasted 3mins 17s from my location, and clearly visible were bright extending prominence's on the Solar edge. While I took some pictures during the last moments of the Sun disappearing and re-appearing behind the Moon, I managed to manually fire off a sequence of differing exposures which I was able to combine to show the Solar Corona in all its glory.

As the final seconds of the Sun began to disappear, I took a series of shots of 1/2000s exp, ISO 200 F/10 through my Takahasi FSCB60 at 600mm, hoping to capture the last rays of Sunlight peeking out behind the eclipsing Moon. The bottom right of image shows the Suns light slowly disappearing down to Totality. While in the top left of the image, you can see the Sun starting to re-appear, as I took images just as Totality was beginning to end. I stacked all these photos to show the movement of the Moon moving in front of the Sun, and how it covers and uncovers the edges of the Sun allowing the Prominence's on each side to shine through, as an eclipse starts and ends. 

Note: All our prints are printed on Baryta 325g Paper, which is an excellent paper for framing. The paper is a gloss type, which gives very vivid colour views.