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Not all science is done by people in white coats under fluorescent lights in university buildings. Sometimes, over a pint in a pub, the trajectory of the scientific record is forever changed.
The same goes for the purple and green lights that spread across the horizon in the northern hemisphere. Although this phenomenon looks like the aurora borealis, it is actually something else entirely.
My name is Steve.
As the sun shines this year, the unusual light spectacle is causing a bit of a stir. entering the most active periodan increasing number of dazzling natural phenomena are appearing in the night sky, leading to new reports of people spotting Steve in places where he doesn’t normally appear, such as parts of cathedrals. England.
But about eight years ago, when NASA Goddard Space Flight Center astrophysicist Elizabeth McDonald was in Calgary, Alberta, for a seminar, she had never seen this phenomenon firsthand. And it didn’t have a name yet.
In fact, few scientists actively studying the aurora borealis and other night sky phenomena had seen Steve. the closer to the equator It is more distinctive than the Northern Lights, with purplish-pink arches with vertical green stripes.
McDonald met with some citizen scientists at the Kilkenny Irish Pub after giving a talk at a nearby university. Most of them were photographers staying up through the night to capture the next stunning image of the Canadian sky.
“I was already in touch with local Alberta aurora trackers in a Facebook group, which was pretty small at the time, but I wanted to share their observations and interact with NASA. was very enthusiastic about it,” McDonald said.
Photographers came with pictures to show off the mystical light show they had captured.
Provided by: Neil Zeller
This image, taken by Canadian photographer Neil Zeller, shows a purplish-pink streak of light marking Steve.
At the time, “we didn’t know exactly what it was,” McDonald said of the phenomenon seen in the images.
Neil Zeller, an expert on the subject of photography, as citizen scientists, or aurora-chasing photographers are sometimes called, was at the meeting.
“I started discovering something called the proton arc in 2015,” Zeller said. “It had been photographed in the past, but it had been misidentified, so when I went to the meeting in the Kilkenny pub, we started having a bit of a discussion about[seeing]the proton arc.”
Dr. Eric Donovan, a professor at the University of Calgary who was in the pub with McDonald that day, assured Zeller that he had never seen a proton arc. According to a paper Donovan later co-authored, the proton arc is “invisible, broad, and diffuse,” while Steve’s is “visually bright, narrow, and structured.”
“The conclusion that night was, we don’t know what this is,” Zeller said. “But can we stop calling this a proton arc?”
It was shortly after that meeting at the pub that another aurora chaser, Chris Ratzlaff, suggested a name for the mysterious light on the group’s Facebook page.
The members of the group are We’re working to better understand this phenomenon, but “until then, I’ll call you Steve,” Ratzlaff said. I have written In a February 2016 Facebook post.
The name was borrowed from the 2006 DreamWorks animated film Over the Hedge. In the film, a herd of animals is frightened by a towering green bush and decides to call it Steve. (“I’m not so scared of Steve anymore,” the porcupine declares.)
The name stuck. Even then, this phenomenon could be better explained. Even after explanations about Steve began to take shape in scientific papers.
Scientists later developed the acronym “Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement” to accompany its name.
An encounter at a small pub in Canada was a turning point.
“This was an in-person meeting and was one of the driving factors to ultimately be able to collect more observations in a more rigorous way and correlate that with satellites. ” MacDonald said.
In the end, McDonald said, the satellite directly observed Steve and collected important data that led to the 2018 crash. study This light suggests that it is a visual manifestation of something called subauroral ion drift, or SAID.
SAID refers to narrow streams of charged particles in Earth’s upper atmosphere. MacDonald said researchers already knew SAID existed, but didn’t know it could pop up from time to time.
Steve is visually different from auroras, which are caused by electrically charged particles that interact with the atmosphere and glow, appearing as dancing ribbons of green, blue, or red. Steve is made up of pretty much the same thing, even though it’s caused by SAID. However, it appears at lower latitudes, often appearing as a mauve streak of light with a distinctive green band, called a picket fence.
Steve can be frustratingly difficult to find, as he appears with Aurora with little regularity.Sometimes I find Steve “It’s a matter of luck,” said Donna Luck, a photographer based in Manitoba, Canada.
Rach has sighted and photographed Steve approximately 24 times, a rare feat in the world of sky photography. She said she uses her family’s farm in a remote area of southern Manitoba with little light pollution.
Provided by: Donna Luck
Above is an image of Steve taken in 2022 by Canadian photographer Donna Luck.
She always checks the space weather before heading out. She is looking for conditions that will at least make her Kp3 (a space weather indicator ranging from Kp0 to Kp9). A higher number indicates more activity.
Lach said the phenomenon appears to begin with a SAR arc (a stable auroral red arc) that appears close to Earth. aurora oval.
“It could eventually move south toward the equatorial side of the aurora, forming Steve,” Luck said.
Luck and Zeller said Steve always appears with aurora borealis, but not every aurora contains Steve.
Where and how to meet Steve
Earth is entering the next era Enhancement of solar activityor solar maximum, occurs about every 11 years, McDonald said.
During this period, viewers can expect more visible light shows in the sky and potentially a chance to see Steve at lower latitudes. The light phenomenon has been seen as far south as Wyoming and Utah, she said.
“There was a visible storm recently. “In the U.S., we’re seeing — just a little bit — down to Death Valley-like levels,” McDonald said. “And recently, the one in November… could be seen over Turkey, Greece, Slovakia, and even the southernmost tip of China, which is extremely rare.”
However, Steve is best seen through the lens of a camera.
To the naked eye, it looks like a faint contrail from a plane crossing the sky, Zeller and Luck noted, and is easy to miss.
The camera is much more sensitive to light and captures Steve’s vibrant colors through the lens.
McDonald added that cell phone cameras could also work.
“This is the first solar maximum, and I think most people will be able to get good photos of the aurora borealis on their phones,” she said.
According to Zeller and Luck, the Steve phenomenon is most likely to be detected around the spring and fall equinoxes. (This year’s autumnal equinox was September 23rd.)
“While I don’t think Steve is more likely to occur at the equinox, it is well known that larger aurora storms occur closer to the equinox,” MacDonald noted. Steve also tends to appear together with the Northern Lights, so this phenomenon is more likely to be observed in March or September.
Zeller and Luck said they often meet with Steve in the evening or midnight.
“It’s not something you can do overnight,” Zeller said. “The longest time I’ve seen Steve go from start to finish he was an hour.”
Zeller added that if you wait until the aurora storm begins to weaken and then point your camera east or directly overhead from a vantage point in Canada, “you’ll start to see purple rivers.”
That’s Steve.
MacDonald encourages anyone interested in photographing the Northern Lights or Steve to join the online community. Aurorasaurus, be Website She said the project, which brings photographers and scientists together, is playing an important role in helping scientists formally identify Steve, and is a project she cares deeply about.
Photos posted by the public always help scientists better understand these light shows, she said.
“Scientists aren’t as good at chasing aurora borealis as the enthusiast public,” she says. “We don’t stay up all night, and we’re not photographers.”