I traveled to Acapulco, Mexico to get as close to the northern limit of this eclipse path as possible. Observing with Sallie McDonald we set up before dawn above the main city but with a good view of the bay.
We were in place at sunrise on December 24 (the day before Christmas). Since we were near the northern limit of the eclipse path the duration would only last 6 minutes from our location. The photos did not survive over time but we were able to see the progress of Baily’s Beads; however, to have seen them more completely we should have been a few miles farther north. However, this was not possible due to security reasons and we had to settle for the site we were at.
The only surviving photo (above) was taken with a Celestron 5 telephoto (focal length 1000mm) but most others were lost over the years. This is one of a number of early eclipses before the internet, email, etc. and depended on film negatives and slides.
We encountered a number of random eclipse observers up on the ridge where we set up our site and two images are shown below.
This was a test run where we were able to evaluate how close we needed to be to capture Baily’s Beads as well as to understand how to find the best weather location for eclipse edge measurements. It is for this reasons that a number of other annular and total solar eclipses were attempted by us from the edge and not the center line.
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