Cyndi and I traveled to Fredricksburg, Texas to view the total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8, 2024. It was intermittently (mostly) cloudy, even during the eclipse. Of the four minutes of totality, we perhaps had 20 seconds of viewing, much of which was spent by me trying to get a photo. My inexpensive camera was very unwilling to focus because of the soft edges caused by the clouds.
Difficulties and challenges aside, we *did* see the eclipse and the final photo taken shows the corona at left, a loop solar prominence at the 5 o'clock position, and just above and to the right of that is Bailey's Beads just about to flare into the diamond ring ... all through hazy and broken clouds. Bailey's Beads is a broken arc of bright light points as light from the edge of the sun's sphere bursts through valleys and canyons on the moon to just begin to reveal the sun's disc to viewers on Earth (or as it is about to be obscured, but this image was taken during the reappearance).
