Source : Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Baily's beads \Bai"ly's beads\ (Astron.)
   A row of bright spots observed in connection with total
   eclipses of the sun. Just before and after a total eclipse,
   the slender, unobscured crescent of the sun's disk appears
   momentarily like a row of bright spots resembling a string of
   beads. The phenomenon (first fully described by Francis
   Baily, 1774 -- 1844) is thought to be an effect of
   irradiation, and of inequalities of the moon's edge.