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. Their responses were much more moving and poetic than we anticipated. Chasing eclipses is not about a cheap thrill. It's more like a pilgrimage, but one with a constantly moving shrine. "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.

Eclipse chasers are people who plan their lives around (and spend small fortunes on) eclipse travel. This year , of course, they'll be joining millions of people in the United States to see the total solar eclipse on August 21.

There's a total solar eclipse somewhere on Earth once every 18 months or so. And whether it's passing over a barren, ice-cragged coast of Antarctica, a remote African desert, or a lonely patch of ocean, you can be sure there will be an umbraphile — a shadow-loving eclipse chaser — there to see it.

Rhonda Coleman, eclipse-chasing resident of Bend, Oregon

Six. … I'm a very modest chaser. Some people have [seen] dozens.

Glenn Schneider, astronomer at the University of Arizona

Thirty-three.

Bill Kramer, a retired computer engineer who runs the website Eclipse-chaser.com

Sixteen total solar eclipses.

Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist who has predicted the next 1,000 years of eclipses

I've been to 27 total eclipses and I've seen about 20 of them. Seven clouded out.

David Makepeace, eclipse chaser and filmmaker

This one in America will be my 16th.

Joe Rao, meteorologist in New York

I've seen a grand total of 11 total eclipses.

Kate Russo, clinical psychologist and author ofBeing in the Shadow:Stories of first-time eclipse experience

I've seen 10 total solar eclipses, and of those, two were clouded out.

Mike Kentrianakis, astronomer with the American Astronomical Society's solar eclipse task force

I have seen 10 total solar eclipses.

Tell us about your first time

Joe Rao

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.

David Makepeace

I flew to Mexico to see a girl. I didn't go to see an eclipse. And then the eclipse came, and it completely floored me.

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. It opened up a three-dimensionality that I was not prepared for. ... In some sense, I've spent the past 26 years also trying to come to terms with that.

Bill Kramer

We were bobbing in the water, clear sky all around us; the sea was relatively calm. This eclipse darkness wall came flashing across the water — and covered us in darkness. And there was this eclipse. "This is like looking upon the eye of God." That's the nearest thing I could equate it to.

Glenn Schneider

I was literally transfixed, I couldn't move. I couldn't operate my cameras. I didn't even think about the telescope. My binoculars hung around my neck and I just stood there staring up at the hole in the sky. ... When it was over, I just stood there unable to move until somebody finally shook me back into reality.

Fred Espenak

By the time the total eclipse ended … I had already promised myself that once in a lifetime was not enough. It was just spectacular and much too short. I've been to the majority of them since then over the past 47 years.

Kate Russo

I had no idea that it was going to be so powerful and emotive and euphoric and exciting. ... It's very unlike any other experience. This is why us eclipse chasers are so passionate. We so want to share this experience with other people.

What does it feel like to experience a total solar eclipse? Why are you hooked?

Bill Kramer

There are insufficient superlatives in the English language — or any language, for that matter — to adequately describe the experience of a total solar eclipse.

I always tell people my fifth eclipse is when my hands stopped shaking during totality. I made a comment of that, and a guy who's seen more eclipses than I came back and said, "Really? Your hands stopped shaking?"

Kate Russo

When I talk about seeing a total solar eclipse, nobody gets it. Nobody can actually understand what it's like in that situation because it's just not within our human experience. The rules of nature are turned upside down, so we just cannot imagine it.

Joe Rao

How much alien stimulation can the mind process in just a little over two minutes? If I told you that I was in a major thunderstorm, or I saw a gorgeous sunset, you can relate to that. Because I'm sure you have experienced a big thunderstorm in your life, and I'm sure you've seen more than your share of beautiful sunsets. When I tell people about my first total eclipse, or any total eclipse, it's impossible to relate that.

Rhonda Coleman

It's very ... it almost is like a bit of a dreadful feeling. It's like, "Whoa, wait a minute. What's happening to my planet?" ... It's a topsy-turvy world. It's not like night. It's not like day. It's not like twilight. It's like nothing you've ever felt before.

Fred Espenak

You experience the music of the spheres, as Kepler called them, the mechanics of the solar system in action.

You get an overwhelming sense of humbleness and how small and petty we really are compared to the mechanics of the solar system, the clockwork of the universe. These events that are taking place, that in no way can we affect or stop. It gives us a sense of how tiny we are and yet how we're connected to the whole system. All this happens all at once.

David Makepeace

I saw the total eclipse and I realized that I was living in a much deeper, much more dynamic universe than I had previously considered.

Mike Kentrianakis

This is the grandest of all astronomical spectacles. It's actually the greatest natural wonder that you could possibly see. Except, of course, the birth of a child.

How do other people typically react to totality, when the sun is completely covered by the moon?

Fred Espenak

Daylight suddenly changes to an eerie twilight in just a handful of seconds, and that's dramatic enough. Then it tends to get quiet. The bright sun that was there just moments ago has vanished. It's replaced by this black orb of the moon.

You hear some people saying: "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," and they just say it for three minutes. Others are totally speechless. Some people might even be praying. Others, just tears of joy running down their cheek.

Kate Russo

Even really hard-nosed scientists can get very, very moved during totality, and it's not uncommon to see people afterward with tears and hugging and feeling very choked up.

What's the farthest you've gone to see one? Or the most difficult journey?

Joe Rao

You do crazy things to see a total eclipse of the sun. In 1990, for example, I managed to get a commercial airline to change the itinerary of their flight. I noticed that there was one particular flight from Honolulu to San Francisco where if they were to delay the flight by 41 minutes, they would be over the Pacific Ocean, and they'd be able to see a total eclipse of the sun. I contacted the airline ... they thought it was a heck of a great idea, and they did it.

David Makepeace

The most extreme eclipse chase that I've ever been on I saw from the coast of the far side of Antarctica. This huge, gorgeous Russian icebreaker ship that took more than 100 eclipse chasers from the tip of Africa down through the Indian Ocean to the Antarctic coast. Then we positioned ourselves precisely in the path of totality and were able to witness humanity's first glimpse of a total eclipse of the sun from the ice continent.

Glenn Schneider

The first eclipse I saw by air, which was in 1986, was one of the most difficult eclipses to get to. Only nine people on earth actually saw that eclipse as a central total eclipse. The width of the path was less than a kilometer. We had to fly about 1,000 kilometers out of Reykjavik, Iceland, between Iceland and Greenland to see that. That was before the days of GPS navigation. It was a rather, rather dicey thing to do.