Spotted new purple aurora light called ‘Steve’ by the scientists

There is a new silly name in town – after scientists spotted a new feature in the northern lights, and named it ‘Steve’.

‘Steve’ is a ribbon of purple light which was initially referred to by the much more tedious name of ‘proton arc’.

And Eric Donovan from the University of Calgary said that he saw something he had never seen before in images shared by a Facebook group called Alberta Aurora Chasers. He didn’t know it then, but it was Steve.

So the group called this strange purple streak of light in the night sky captured in their photographs a ‘proton arc’ but for a number of reasons, including the fact that proton aurora are never visible, Professor Donovan knew this had to be something else.

The group decided that the mysterious object should be called Steve.

The Aurora Chasers combed through their photos and kept an eye out for the next appearances of Steve, Prof. Donovan and colleagues turned to data from the Swarm mission and his network of all-sky cameras.

Soon he was able to match a ground sighting of Steve to an overpass of one of the three Swarm satellites.

Prof. Donovan said, ‘As the satellite flew straight though Steve, data from the electric field instrument showed very clear 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.’

‘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.’

‘Swarm allows us to measure it and I’m sure will continue to help resolve some unanswered questions.’

ESA’s Swarm mission scientist, Roger Haagmans, added, ‘It is amazing how a beautiful natural phenomenon, seen by observant citizens, can trigger scientists’ curiosity.

‘The ground network and the electric and magnetic field measurements made by Swarm are great tools that can be used to better understand Steve. This is a nice example of society for science.’