For these moonstruck travelers criss-cross the globe just to capture a couple of minutes of magic -- that special moment of "totality" when day turns into instant night and the moon blocks out the sun.
Wednesday is a very important day for Brightwell. At 11 minutes, 11 seconds past 11 A.M on August 11, he will be seeing his 11th eclipse.
"It is a mystical thing -- like a homecoming," said Brightwell, a proud member of the 1,000-second club for the amount of time he has clocked up witnessing total eclipses.
"People ask me whether it's better than sex," he said.
"Let's just say that I have got a tape recording of my reaction on a trip last year to Antigua and I was yelling and screaming," he told the Mirror tabloid, recounting his eternal globe-trotting in search of the perfect eclipse.
It all started for Brightwell in Canada on Lake Winnipeg on February 26, 1979.
"It was a sudden run into totality and you could see the moon's shadow coming in. The drop in temperature was so dramatic, ice built up on my hands," he recalled.
Since then, he has flown to India, Thailand, Morocco, the Philippines, Mexico and Antigua for a string of eclipses.
Pressed for his best eclipse, he singles out the six and half minutes of total darkness at La Paz, Mexico in 1991.
And once he has witnessed mainland Britain's first total eclipse for 72 years, he will be busy saving money for yet another solar adventure -- the next eclipse sweeps over Angola on June 21, 2001.
Eclipse veteran Milet certainly has no lack of dedication.
In 1984, he flew specially to Gabon to catch one total eclipse that lasted just three quarters of a second.
Applause, panic and tears are the prevailing emotions he has observed over the years.
"In Venezuela 18 months ago, everyone broke down in tears. I saw people throwing themselves to the ground and sobbing for 10 minutes," he said.
For Astronomy Professor John Parkinson, viewing the eclipse is an almost ethereal experience -- well worth the 20,000 pounds he has spent chasing seven of them around the world.
"At totality, the fragility of the universe and our existence suddenly strikes home," he told The Sunday Times.
"It makes you realize that the sun could be blocked out forever at any moment. That is a very humbling experience."
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