This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Canada, which closed in 2021.

Alberta Aurora Chasers Discover A New Night Sky Aurora Called 'Steve'

NASA and the European Space Agency are now on the case.

Up in the sky, look: It's a bird. It's a plane. It's ... Steve?

Such is the name being given to a newly discovered night sky phenomenon, and Alberta citizen photographers are being given credit for the discovery.

In photos, "Steve" shows up as a bright purple-pink streak across the sky — a light that would often appear in photos posted to the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook page.

The group's photographers began to notice Steve a few years ago, administrator Chris Ratzlaff told The Huffington Post Canada, but it wasn't until a talk at the University of Calgary in 2015 that the scientific community took interest.

Ratzlaff said the group's members approached U of C physicist Eric Donovan and NASA's Elizabeth MacDonald, who works with the agency's citizen aurora project, Aurorasaurus, with some photos of Steve.

The group was pretty convinced they had photos of a phenomenon called a proton arc, but Donovan didn't agree.

Instead, Donovan began cross-referencing the locations and times of the photographers' photos with information collected by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Swarm mission.

He waited until one of Swarm's satellites flew directly though Steve and noted some big changes.

"The temperature 300 kilometres above Earth’s surface jumped by 3000 C and the data revealed a 25 kilometre-wide ribbon of gas flowing westwards at about 6 kilometres/second compared to a speed of about 10 metres/second either side of the ribbon," he noted in an ESA press release.

According to NASA's Aurorasaurus blog, here's what you need to know about Steve. Story continues below:

7 Things To Know About 'Steve'

Donovan, however, remains coy about what causes the phenomenon — he told Gizmodo the world will have to wait for his theory, which will be published "shortly."

However, he said Steve has been hiding in plain sight for quite some time.

“It turns out that Steve is actually remarkably common, but we hadn’t noticed it before. It’s thanks to ground-based observations, satellites, today’s explosion of access to data and an army of citizen scientists joining forces to document it," he noted to the ESA.

As for Steve's name — it was originally given by the Alberta Aurora Chasers group, as a reference to the popular children’s movie "Over the Hedge," where one of the characters isn’t sure what he is looking at and randomly names the object Steve.

But now there's a push to turn the name into an acronym meaning "Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement."

As far as your chance of seeing Steve with the naked eye, Ratzlaff says it's possible but reminds casual stargazers that most photos of Steve have been heavily processed and that it doesn't usually appear so brightly to the naked eye.

To see footage of Steve in action, check out NASA's video above.

Close
This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost Canada. Certain site features have been disabled. If you have questions or concerns, please check our FAQ or contact support@huffpost.com.