![]() ![]() We so want to share this experience with other people. This is why us eclipse chasers are so passionate. I had no idea that it was going to be so powerful and emotive and euphoric and exciting. I've been to the majority of them since then over the past 47 years. It was just spectacular and much too short. Fred Espenakīy the time the total eclipse ended … I had already promised myself that once in a lifetime was not enough. When it was over, I just stood there unable to move until somebody finally shook me back into reality. My binoculars hung around my neck and I just stood there staring up at the hole in the sky. I was literally transfixed, I couldn't move. ![]() “This is like looking upon the eye of God.” That's the nearest thing I could equate it to. This eclipse darkness wall came flashing across the water - and covered us in darkness. We were bobbing in the water, clear sky all around us the sea was relatively calm. In some sense, I've spent the past 26 years also trying to come to terms with that. It opened up a three-dimensionality that I was not prepared for. I was completely unprepared for the vision I saw in the sky, and for how intense the feeling was of all of a sudden being lifted in my consciousness off the globe, off this two-dimensional life I was living. And then the eclipse came, and it completely floored me. They say you never forget your first kiss, you never forget making love for the first time, and as far as an eclipse chaser goes, you always remember your first time in the shadow. Mike Kentrianakis, astronomer with the American Astronomical Society’s solar eclipse task force I've seen 10 total solar eclipses, and of those, two were clouded out. Kate Russo, clinical psychologist and author of Being in the Shadow: Stories of first-time eclipse experience I've seen a grand total of 11 total eclipses. David Makepeace Bella Lucy/Vox David Makepeace, eclipse chaser and filmmaker I've been to 27 total eclipses and I've seen about 20 of them. Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist who has predicted the next 1,000 years of eclipses Bill Kramer, a retired computer engineer who runs the website Glenn Schneider, astronomer at the University of Arizona How many total solar eclipses have you seen? Rhonda Coleman Bella Lucy/Vox Rhonda Coleman, eclipse-chasing resident of Bend, Oregon These responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity. “There are insufficient superlatives in the English language, or any language for that matter, to adequately describe the experience of a total solar eclipse,” one told us. It’s more like a pilgrimage, but one with a constantly moving shrine. Chasing eclipses is not about a cheap thrill. Their responses were much more moving and poetic than we anticipated. We wanted to know: What’s so special about total solar eclipses that you would chase them around the world? So we called up eight eclipse chasers and talked to them for hours, asking them all a similar set of questions. ![]()
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