Atmospheric phenomenon known as 'Steve' will brighten up your night
A mysterious dancing light that appears in the skies above Calgary and other Canadian cities is inspiring researchers to determine what the burst of colours could possibly be.
The atmospheric phenomenon currently doesn’t have an official title, so the Alberta Aurora Chasers have nicknamed it “Steve”. There is plenty of mystery around the swirls of green and purple, which are unique in comparison to other auroral features.
What is known? Steve can be found in the northern hemisphere along similar latitudes to Calgary.
It is a 25 to 30 kilometres-wide arc that aligns east-west, and extends possibly thousands of kilometres. Visions of Steve can last for 20 minutes or longer, and show up seasonally, disappearing between the months of October to February.
Eric Donovan with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary is using the European Space Agency’s Swarm magnetic field mission in an effort to learn more.
When a Swarm satellite travelled through Steve recently, the data collected by its electric field instrument showed noticeable, and extreme, changes.
“The temperature 300 km above Earth’s surface jumped by 3000°C and the data revealed a 25 km-wide ribbon of gas flowing westwards at about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s either side of the ribbon,” Donovan wrote in an ESA press release.
Those eager to know more about this mystery in the sky will have to be patient: Donovan and his colleagues will publish their theory on the phenomenon in the near future.
“I saw it a few months ago in Calgary, so it’s quite bright,” he told Gizmodo. “A colleague of mine suggested it might be the most seen type of aurora—because it is equator-ward—and also the least studied, because we didn’t know it existed, really.”
