Why observe from near the path edge instead of the centerline?
A total eclipse of the Sun is spectacular. A partial eclipse is merely of passing interest. In like manner, just how spectacular the total eclipse will be depends upon your location within the path of totality. For two hundred years, astronomers predicted and observed total eclipses of the Sun, and simply assumed that the best place to be was in the middle of the path. It was obvious that the eclipse was longest on the centerline of the path; and that the rare view of the Sun’s beautiful white outer atmosphere, the corona, which can be seen only during eclipses, was also longest on the centerline. So without much further thought to the matter, astronomers assumed that all interesting total eclipse phenomena were best seen from the centerline. What an embarrassing blunder! To show just a single example of how wrong that naive notion was, consider the most colorful part of the Sun’s atmosphere the innermost past above the Sun’s visible disc, called the chromosphere. It received that name
