A good analogy is putting a penny atop a nickel, the penny being the moon, the nickel being the sun. An annular eclipse, though a rare and amazing sight, is far different from a total one. The sky will darken . . . somewhat; a sort of weird “counterfeit twilight” since so much of the Sun still shows. It is really more of a day, not a night sky; the eclipse is a subspecies of a partial, not total. The maximum duration for an annular eclipse is 12 minutes 30 seconds.