Celestial Phenomena Known as 'Steve'

Toroid

Founding Member
Steve appears as a neon purplish or green strip across the night sky and can be seen in Canada.
There’s a stunning celestial phenomenon that’s officially named “Steve”
Written by
Lila MacLellan
March 16, 2018

The saga of Steve continues. And this time, the northern lights-like celestial phenomenon is being officially recognized by research published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

Steve looks like a neon purplish or green strip across the night sky, and it’s visible in Canada, though it’s not a streak of the aurora borealis. When Steve appears, it’s moving from east to West, and might be visible anywhere from Ontario to Alaska. It travels at about 4 miles per second, but appears static from the ground, and is routinely spotted at latitudes far further south than traditional northern lights.

Scientists identified the arc-shaped ribbon as an extremely hot (up to 10,000 degrees F), 16-mile thick river of ionized gas, about 200 miles above the earth’s surface. But much about Steve remains mysterious, even following the publication of the new study led by Elizabeth MacDonald, a space physicist at NASA. The researchers know that Steve is similar to a subauroral ion drift (SAID), except they are normally invisible to the naked eye.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ9yB9omgt4
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nivek

As Above So Below
So may the solar system may be passing through a gaseous region of space with supercharged particles?...
 

Toroid

Founding Member
My understanding is the northern & southern lights are generated by charged particles from the sun. The Earth's magnetic field directs them to the poles. I don't know how cosmic energies from outside the solar system effect the lights.

From the first link:
Chris Ratzlaff, who runs the Alberta Aurora Chasers’ Facebook page, chose “Steve,” a name pulled from a 2006 children’s movie, Over the Hedge, in which a gang of animals give the random name to an unknown, slightly frightening being they can’t see.

The nickname was far humbler than the titles of most atmospheric optical phenomena, which have titles like Rayleigh scattering, crepuscular ray, or lunar corona, but “Steve” was meant to be temporary. And yet, it stuck. In honor of its origins, scientists have decided to keep the name, but have retroactively made it an acronym for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
Where did this ionized gas come from?...
 

Toroid

Founding Member
STEVE (which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement),
Scientists figure out what the celestial phenomenon "Steve" really is
The recently-discovered atmospheric glow known as STEVE took the sky-gazing world by storm when it first appeared. While looking like a family member of the aurora borealis clan we've come to know and love, STEVE was different. Typical auroras are usually seen as swirling green ribbons spreading across the sky; but Steve is a thin ribbon of pinkish-red light snaking from east to west, and also farther south than where auroras usually appear. Even odder, Steve is sometimes accompanied by green vertical shafts of light lovingly known now as the "picket fence."

Scientists have mused about the strange nature of STEVE (which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), and weren't sure if it was a kind of aurora at all. "Auroras are produced by glowing oxygen and nitrogen atoms in Earth's upper atmosphere," explains the American Geophysical Union, "excited by charged particles streaming in from the near-Earth magnetic environment called the magnetosphere."

Shedding some light on the mystery, a 2018 study found that STEVE's unique spectacle was not due to charged particles raining down into Earth's upper atmosphere. Rather, the authors explained it more as a "sky-glow" that is distinct from the aurora – yet they were unsure exactly what was causing it.
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