News In Brief

Eclipse-watching in an Atlanta park

Cheers rose from the huge crowd gathered on the rolling grassy hills of Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta Wednesday as the annular eclipse of the sun hit its peak.

The crowd of business men and women, mingled with the jeans-and-T-shirt set, watched the eclipse through homemade contraptions such as pinholes on cardboard, to avoid looking directly at the sun.

At its peak, one could see Bailey's Beads, an extraordinary phenomenon in which the sun actually shines between the mountains on the moon. The moon momentarily had a halo effect from the sun.

''All right, everybody back here in 2017,'' said an enthusiast, looking ahead to the date of the next similar eclipse.