At a Glance

A group of citizen scientists discovered a new type of aurora, which they have named "Steve."Steve appears in the sky as a ribbon of purple light, which is unusual for this type of atmospheric phenomenon.Researchers are still examining Steve to find out what exactly it is.

A new type of aurora has been discovered dancing in the sky thanks tocitizen scientists who shared photos of the phenomenon on Facebook.

One photo showed that members of the Alberta Aurora Chasers decide to name “Steve,” according to a release from the European Space Agency. The image piqued the interest of University of Calgary professor and scientist Eric Donovan, who decided to take a closer look.

Steve's name is in reference to the children’s movie “Over the Hedge,” in which the characters , BBC.com reported.

The Aurora Chasers suggested Steve was a proton arc, butproton aurorasare never visible. Because they are caused by fast-moving energetic protons, , according to the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Therefore, Donovan knew Steve had to be something else.

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The photo above shows a newly-discovered type of aurora. Citizen scientists posted the photo of the phenomenon to Facebook and named it "Steve."

(European Space Agency)

He managed to match a ground sighting of Steve to an overpass spottedon one of three satellites that are part of the European Space Agency’s Swarm magnetic field mission, according to the release.

“As the satellite flew straight though Steve, data from the electric field instrument showed very clear changes,” Donovan said in the release. “The temperature 300 km (186 miles) above Earth’s surface jumped by 3000 degrees Celsius (5432 degrees Fahrenheit) and the data revealed a 25 km-wide (15 mile) ribbon of gas flowing westwards at about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s either side of the ribbon.”

He discoveredSteve is actually very common and had gone unnoticed all this time.

“,” Donovan 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.”

Researchers from the ESA, NASA and the University of Calgary haveanalyzed Steve and other similar light beamsto try to learn what it really is, reports Gizmodo. One of the citizen scientists suggested keeping the name Steve as an acronym for “Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.”

“With my colleague Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, we are working on the conditions under which it occurs, and we have an ideabut are not sharing that right now,” Donovan told Gizmodo. “We plan on publishing the idea shortly.”

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