But it's more than the sky. You will see the Moon's shadow rushing at you from the west before the totality, then rushing away into the east. It gets surprisingly cold. Wildlife, like birds and insects, are confused by partial eclipses, but may do very strange things during total eclipses. You may see writhing shadows ("sky snakes") on the ground, which I think are caused by the sunlight passing through the temperature-driven turbulence in the air at the edge of the Moon's shadow, but I don't know whether that is established scientifically. It is a full-body experience, which is very hard to put into words.

There's another feature of the sky that is worth mentioning, which is impossible to represent in print or on a computer screen, which is the blackness of the Moon within the totality. On a computer screen the darkest you can make the screen is just "off." On paper, you can apply black ink, but unless you have an annoyingly picky artist in the printing process, the black printer ink is nothing special. But the blackness of the totally-eclipsed Sun, set against the corona and the clear midday twilight sky, was like nothing I have ever seen. Blacker than black velvet, blacker than a mineshaft, blacker somehow (perhaps due to contrast) that the part of the tour of Carlsbad Caverns or Mammoth Cave where you get into the belly of the Earth and the tour guide has everyone shut off all of their lights. Like looking through the sky into a light-stealing abyss beyond. The 0.5% Sun you are considering watching will have blue sky within the crescent.

But it's more than the sky. You will see the Moon's shadow rushing at you from the west before the totality, then rushing away into the east. It gets surprisingly cold. Wildlife, like birds and insects, are confused by partial eclipses, but may do very strange things during total eclipses. You may see writhing shadows ("sky snakes") on the ground, which I think are caused by the sunlight passing through the temperature-driven turbulence in the air at the edge of the Moon's shadow, but I don't know whether that is established scientifically. It is a full-body experience, which is very hard to put into words.

The difference between a deep partial eclipse and a total eclipse is sort of like the difference between a really excellent dinner, the kind of dinner that you'll remember with fondness later, versus your first kiss with your future spouse. Travel to see the totality.

Don't feel like you have to travel all the way to the middle of the path of totality to get a proper eclipse experience. The moon's shadow is a circle, and the slope of a circle goes to infinity at its edge, so the duration of the total eclipse goes up very fast. In 2017, the university where I was teaching hadn't considered holding an event on campus, even though we were in the path of totality, because we were only a mile from the edge of the path and it surely wouldn't be long enough to be interesting. WRONG. Just a mile from the edge of the path, we got about sixty seconds of total eclipse. We had about 5000 visitors for the event, perfect weather, an amazing experience.

The next total eclipse in North America is not for twenty years. You are so close to this one. Don't skip it.

The difference between a deep partial eclipse and a total eclipse is sort of like the difference between a really excellent dinner, the kind of dinner that you'll remember with fondness later, versus your first kiss with your future spouse. Travel to see the totality.

Don't feel like you have to travel all the way to the middle of the path of totality to get a proper eclipse experience. The moon's shadow is a circle, and the slope of a circle goes to infinity at its edge, so the duration of the total eclipse goes up very fast. In 2017, the university where I was teaching hadn't considered holding an event on campus, even though we were in the path of totality, because we were only a mile from the edge of the path and it surely wouldn't be long enough to be interesting. WRONG. Just a mile from the edge of the path, we got about sixty seconds of total eclipse. We had about 5000 visitors for the event, perfect weather, an amazing experience.

The next total eclipse in North America is not for twenty years. You are so close to this one. Don't skip it.

There was a request for a more mathematical answer.

The Sun has apparent magnitude $-26$, while the full Moon has apparent magnitude $-12$. (I couldn't find a visual magnitude for the corona in five minutes of searching, but it is frequently described as "about as bright as the full Moon.") A difference of five magnitudes is a factor of 100 in brightness, so the Sun is nearly a million times brighter than the corona. A 99.9% eclipsed Sun would still be about a thousand times brighter than the corona. It would be very hard to observe the corona safely — you would have to look through your solar filter glasses to see it naked eye, or do some complicated photography. You could take your eclipse glasses out tonight and see if you can spot the Moon through them.

Even a full moon washes out the stars somewhat. A sky with a thousand full Moons would be too bright to spot any but the brightest stars and planets. But that may sound misleadingly optimistic. You can sometimes spot Venus or Jupiter in the full daytime sky, if you already know exactly where to look.

But it's more than the sky. You will see the Moon's shadow rushing at you from the west before the totality, then rushing away into the east. It gets surprisingly cold. Wildlife, like birds and insects, are confused by partial eclipses, but may do very strange things during total eclipses. You may see writhing shadows ("sky snakes") on the ground, which I think are caused by the sunlight passing through the temperature-driven turbulence in the air at the edge of the Moon's shadow, but I don't know whether that is established scientifically. It is a full-body experience, which is very hard to put into words.

I started out with an emotional answer, rather than a physics answer, because observing a total eclipse has been an emotional experience for everyone I have know who has seen one. I'm not enough of a poet to get this point across, unfortunately.