'Steve' is the name of a new kind of aurora, discovered thanks to citizen scientists
"Steve" may be ordinary as it comes with aurora names, but one called exactly that certainly has an extraordinary story.
The streaks of purple light which appeared in the sky over Regina, Canada, were the source of curiosity for locals who hadn't seen anything quite like it before.
That wonder over "Steve" led to a project called Aurorasaurus, where locals, or should we say citizen scientists, shared their findings on the mysterious lights. Between 2015 to 2016, there were 30 reports submitted to the project, overlooked by scientists from NASA and the University of Calgary.
Those sightings became the subject of a peer-reviewed paper, published this week in the journal Scientific Advances. It was indeed, unlike any other aurora.
It is, in fact, a new kind of aurora, appearing like a line with a beginning and end, as opposed to a typically oval shape like the others. Steve is also purple, with green features resembling a picket fence, unlike those signature greens, blues and reds of a regular aurora.
Like other auroras, Steve is created by charged particles from the sun, colliding with the magnetic fields around our Earth to generate a stunning light display.
As noted by NASA, the difference with Steve is in the details. It travels along different magnetic field lines, and appears at lower latitudes closer to the equator.
Steve is also associated with something called the "subauroral ion drift," a stream of fast moving, extremely hot particles which scientists have been studying since the 1970s, but didn't know that it came with accompanying visual effect.
While Steve was just a name, it now stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. Scientists hope to learn more about it in future, but the phenomena only lasts up to an hour in an area.
At least there are photos.
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