“If you are in that path of totality, you are seeing the main event, but if you are off to the side – even where the sun is 99 percent covered by the moon – it is like going up to the ticket booth of a baseball or football stadium but not going inside,” Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, told Space.com:
Some reading on solar eclipses…
Item #2 in this article scares me a little…
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/27/seven-things-you-must-anticipate-for-the-2017-solar-eclipse/#211d03c047b8
The video at the bottom of this page gives a good idea how special a total eclipse is; I don’t speak Spanish, but you can tell these guys are excited:
https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/splendor/
“If you are in that path of totality, you are seeing the main event, but if you are off to the side – even where the sun is 99 percent covered by the moon – it is like going up to the ticket booth of a baseball or football stadium but not going inside,” Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, told Space.com:
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0821/What-makes-2017-s-Great-American-Eclipse-so-great
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2016/0423/The-Great-American-Eclipse-Where-to-view-the-solar-obfuscation