‘Eclipse chaser’ travels to Buck Creek State Park for 8th solar eclipse

Her parents first got her interested in the solar phenomenon when she was around 8 and saw her first total eclipse in 1963 in Caratunk, Maine, which is on the Appalachian Trial.

The furthest she’s ever traveled yet to see an eclipse was to Akjoujt, Mauritania, in the Sahara Desert, which was in 1973 with a Harvard University solar expedition, she said.

”It’s the emotional rush that you get during totality; there’s nothing like the feeling of being under the sun when the moon comes through and seeing something so bizarrely different in the middle of the day,” Buccini said. “And when you’re with other people who appreciate it, the energy of everybody around you just grows and it’s a very exciting emotional time.”