the leading American and European scientists are now stating that Tea Party members, being special people for whom rules of normal humanity do not apply, are immune from eye destroying eclipse viewing. They are free to watch the eclipse without protective eyeware. Good luck.

The article isn't much help: "A hybrid solar eclipse occurs when an annular solar eclipse shifts into a total solar eclipse along different points of the eclipse path."

Closer=The curve

Now imagine the earths core is at 238,000 miles
IF you are at the closest point to the moon, you're at 241,500 miles....you see the whole sun darkened (Total)

Never mind. The sfgate article discusses it.

....more eclipses. The moon is slowly getting further from the earth.

This has to do with the tides on earth which somehow give a constant little nudge.

This understood, that doesn't mean that I'm in favor of the moon's movement; so please don't label me a recessionist.

Once the moon gets far enough away that it no longer can cover the same apparent size of the sun, there will be no more Total Eclipses. But there will still be partial and annular eclipses.

...very interesting.

Opinions vary, there may be people that do not go to zoos because there used to be dinosaurs on the planet...

I'm hoping by then I'll be able to just fly closer to the moon.

The last total eclipse of the sun by the moon is over a billion years away, so disdain for eclipses after that is a bit specious.

Seriously, here in St Petersburg, I'm lucky to see a 4th magnitude object anyway. Some nights Polaris is barely visible.

Bedtime almost 1:00 here..

Nuff said .......or maybe too much said.

"ll we covered who we consider important, the flyover assholes can fend for themselves"

because the sun will not have risen yet.

Instead of an out of scale, worthless diagram of the earth, sun and moon, how about a map of the path of the eclipse? I think most people understand that an eclipse means the moon is in the path of the light coming from the sun and don't need a picture to understand that. It is not like the path of the penumbra stops at the western edge of the city limits of the major metro areas on the coast.

If you're not in one of the original 13 (plus Vermont and Maine) you're not going to see anything.

The eclipse will be done at 7:09 AM Eastern time. If your local sunrise is after that, you won't see anything. The coast is barely going to see anything.

Except for me, of course. At 6:35 AM tomorrow morning I will be driving Eastward toward the Garden State Parkway and will have the damned eclipsing sun in my face the whole time. May have to pull over and look down for a while.