University of Hawaii solar eclipse researcher Shadia Rifai Habbal will be at it again today when the moon fully obscures the sun in a coast-to-coast belt across North America, the first total eclipse to cross the continent since 1918.

The veteran of 14 total eclipses over the last 22 years will lead a NASA- supported mission in which teams of scientists conduct experiments at five locations across the U.S., each about 600 miles apart.

Habbal said she’s hoping for a large haul of data as the path of totality traverses a huge landmass with viewing areas that are easily accessible.

Her “Solar Wind Sherpas” scientific team will be armed with even more measuring tools than usual, including nearly identical cameras, spectrometers and lots of other instrumentation.

“We want to maximize our chances of getting data, because weather is always an issue,” Habbal said in a UH interview. “Just a small cloud appearing in front of the sun a few minutes beforehand can ruin it for you.”

Like last year, when clouds obscured much of the show for her teams in Indonesia.

“In 2015 when we went to Svalbard (Norway), we had fantastic weather despite the odds of not having good weather,” she said. “And in Indonesia it was the opposite. We had clouds and it was very disheartening. Let’s hope we get something this year.”

As they have in the past, Habbal and her team will be seeking additional clues to help answer one of the great mysteries of science: why the sun’s surface temperature is only about 6,000 degrees while the corona, the gaseous envelope of the sun visible only during a total eclipse, is much hotter at several million degrees.

By observing the corona, the team aims to learn more about the various temperatures of the sun’s aura and the composition of the gases. Combining the data with their knowledge of physics, she said, the scientists hope to figure out the processes causing the phenomenon.

“It takes a very, very long time,” she said. “I mean, we’ve been doing this for two decades now, and we’re not the only people doing this type of research.”

Whoever makes the discovery will have achieved a major advancement in science.

“The sun is our closest star, so whatever we learn from the sun we can apply to other stars, and it will tell us something about the whole universe and the formation of solar systems. It’s a very profound concept and idea we are exploring,” Habbal said.

“We hope to find the clues, but I think it will take a lot more work.”

With funding on the line and not much time to gather data, there is a lot of pressure to ensure there are no glitches with the equipment. It makes it hard to appreciate the beauty of the event.

“I’m always stressed, and I’m always making sure cameras are clicking and things haven’t stopped because we have to watch to make sure images are downloading on the screen. So it’s never a really relaxing moment,” she said.

Habbal said her first eclipse in India in 1995 was the most spectacular she has ever seen. The rest, she said, haven’t quite measured up.

Nevertheless, she recommends doing whatever it takes to find your way to viewing a phenomenon where daylight turns to night, the stars come out and the otherworldly corona dances spectacularly around the darkened disc of the moon.

Beyond the actual beauty of the moment, the fact that we are even able to see it is simply amazing.

Amazing, she said, is the fact that the sun is exactly 400 times wider than the moon but also 400 times farther away, making the two objects the same size in our sky. If the moon were any closer or farther away, either the full corona or the inner corona would not be visible.

In addition, the laws of gravity and motion of objects in the universe has allowed us to figure out when and where eclipses will happen.

“Just living this realization is very unique,” she said.

Habbal was born and raised in Damascus, Syria, where she attended the University of Damascus. She later attended the University of Beirut before moving to the U.S., where she earned her doctorate in physics from the University of Cincinnati.

She joined UH’s Institute for Astronomy as a professor in 2005.

“The excitement is building,” she said. “It’s very stressful and challenging to prepare for an eclipse of this magnitude.”