[divbzero]

I’ve always found this to be a curious coincidence, that the Sun’s corona remains visible during total solar eclipses because the Moon blocks out the Sun just so.

But the really fun part is described in the link above:

> Tidal interactions cause the Moon to spiral about one inch per year away from Earth. In the distant past, the Moon was close enough to Earth so that it could block the Sun's entire disk and then some. Our prehuman ancestors would not have witnessed the beautiful coronal displays that we now enjoy. And about 50 million years from now, the Moon will be far enough away so that our descendants will only see annular eclipses.