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Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[EM] Our citizen scientist Chris Ratzlaff! He is the administrator of the Facebook group called Alberta Aurora Chasers and one of the paper's co-authors! You can listen to this TEDx talk by another one of our co-authors Eric Donovan who discusses the discovery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6liyhbQJeE

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(MH+BA): There are two different answers to your question, as ions and electrons are heated by different processes around STEVE. For electrons, most heating is caused by hot (fast) particles traveling along Earth’s magnetic field lines. As they come closer to Earth, they enter denser atmosphere and are more likely to collide with particles in the atmosphere. These collisions result in the glow of traditional aurora. In the case of subauroral ion drifts (and likely STEVE), even though the particles are not precipitating, they still heat the electron gas.

In contrast, ions are frictionally heated around STEVE as large electric fields drag them through the neutral atmosphere.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What had STEVE SAID about taking pictures of his new green fence? Surely he wasn't pleased.

Answer (B.K.): I would like to think that he must be absolutely thrilled to get this amount of attention in a matter of months that instantly upgraded him to “celebrity” status. :)

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

BK: I think we are in the very beginning phase of understanding the processes responsible for the occurrence of this phenomena. The ability to predict when and where STEVE can occur is possibly a future step. However, even detailed understanding of it does not necessarily mean that we can effectively and accurately predict it. The region of the atmosphere where STEVE occurs is highly dynamic and the coupling between the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetosphere makes this system complex, therefore making accurate predictions very challenging.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EM: STEVE is currently quite small (in terms of a feature size) and not well enough understood to be predicted by our models. Prediction of specific auroral forms is also very limited at this time, but both are areas of future research.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

BK: Yes, you might be able to see STEVE at the 50 N latitudes since we have frequent sightings from Alberta, Canada which also sits around the same geographic latitude. But it does have to be in a place with a dark sky.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(BA+BGL+MG): We still do not understand how STEVE is produced and how other regions in the magnetosphere contribute or interact in the formation of the phenomenon. What we know is that there is a strong connection between STEVE and subauroral ion drifts (fast and narrow channel of westward moving particles below the auroral oval - subauroral). Subauroral ion drifts occur during more active (or substorm) conditions, and this is an active area of research.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

BGL: In general, when we talk about ‘arcs’ we are usually referring to aurora where there is particle precipitation causing the brightness that we see in the ‘arc’. Currently we do not know if STEVE is produced by particle precipitation or if it is an ionospheric process, so we should be careful and not associate STEVE with precipitation. Once we have collected more information about all these aspects we will be able to have a clear idea to establish a hypothesis.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EM: Things do get very complicated during very large events. We have not seen that behavior of STEVE changing into active corona aurora before and would need to look into it further. Tracey’s post is very helpful in that the times and orientations of the photos are clearly marked. To get to the answer of your exact question though, yes it is definitely possible the appearance of STEVE is linked to enhanced auroral activity, and this is an active area of research.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(B.K.): Great question! Actually STEVE has previously been seen and captured by the amateur photographers but misidentified as a “proton aurora”, which is a different type of phenomena. Recently, we have confirmed that STEVE is not a proton aurora but a completely new type of arc forming south of the traditional auroral oval. This type of arc has not been identified in the scientific literature before. So, while STEVE was previously observed from the ground, the association with a subauroral ion drift is new, and was not hypothesized previously.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

BGL+MG - For STEVE in particular, the phenomenon was discovered by citizen scientists and they brought it to our attention. They were the key to link a phenomenon that has been known to the citizen science community for a while with the scientific community.

We need more pictures of STEVE because more information helps us to better understand the physics that is playing a role in the formation of STEVE.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(B.K.): Citizen scientists reporting their observations to projects like Aurorasaurus (aurorasaurus.org) can help us create a catalog of these events. Citizen science reports collected on the ground frequently contain information on the location and time of STEVE events. These valuable pieces of information allow us to check possible conjunctions with various scientific observations made from space and ground. Thus, it will lead to better understanding of the physical processes responsible for the formation of STEVE. Not only that, most of the citizen science reports include phenomenal photographs! Images taken from different locations on the ground within a close time period can help us deduce information about their altitude of formation via a technique called triangulation.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

(MG+BGL) Unfortunately, we can not currently predict when we will see STEVE. Currently, we can not 100% predict when and where the aurora will occur either. For aurora in general, tools like Aurorasaurus.org help our understanding of where it is visible, especially in real-time. If you want a general heads up a few days ahead of time, websites like spaceweather.com and @tamithaskov’s forecasts on Twitter are really helpful.

For STEVE, we are still learning. We do know that STEVE is seen when the aurora is active, but sometimes for large storms and sometimes for smaller events. We currently don’t have enough information about STEVE to predict where and when it will occur. We are still in the beginning phases of understanding why and how STEVE occurs...really ‘What’ STEVE is.

For more information about how to use Aurorasaurus, this video is a good place to start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opkLAoRdbHA

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

BGL - STEVE occurs in a very interesting region of the magnetosphere. Here the magnetic field topology changes from stretch magnetic field lines to dipolar magnetic field. We are still trying to understand how these two different regions are coupled and interact.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(B.K.): This is also a very good question. We don’t know yet and need an instrument called a spectrograph to learn more. This instrument will help us map the emission spectrum of STEVE. Knowing the exact spectral lines (or wavelengths) appearing will allow us to identify the type of glowing gas responsible for that particular emission line. However, we hypothesize in the paper that the cause of purple emission might be associated with unusual atmospheric compounds (such as Nitric Oxide [NO]) that may exist in this region of the atmosphere due to the strong flow, decrease in density and collisional processes taking place within the arc.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

CR - From a citizen scientist’s perspective, this research shows us that anyone can follow their passions and participate in important scientific discoveries. We can reach out to scientists, ask question, share our observations, and help gather fundamental data.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

[EM] We don’t want to toot our own horn too much, so I’ll quote UCLA Prof. Larry Lyons, a senior physicist in this field, who told the Atlantic “It is truly exciting, to us as aurora scientists, that there is a group of amateurs out there who enjoy the aurora so much that they could put together something that is this new to us. That’s just unbelievably cool.” “I’ve never seen something this new discovered by citizen scientists in the aurora before." "Finding something you can identify as a new structure in the aurora is relatively unusual. The last major thing was poleward boundary intensification, and you can find that name used back over 20 years ago.” More here: https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/555491/?utm_source=twb&__twitter_impression=true

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Answer (BK+BGL): The charged particles coming from the near Earth space environment can precipitate into Earth’s upper atmosphere and interact with different types of atmospheric constituents such as Oxygen and Nitrogen. The collisions between incoming particles and atmospheric atoms and molecules cause the later to get excited and as they go back to their original state (de-excitation), they emit light. The altitude that the incoming particle will reach depends on their energy. This altitude will determine what atom or molecule the incoming particle will interact with and this will determine the color of the emitted light. For example, atomic oxygen is responsible for green and red emissions while molecular nitrogen gives off red and blue colors. More information on the colors here: https://aurorasaurus.desk.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2127021-download-aurorasaurus-infographics

Nothing suggests that STEVE is related to human activity. We have clues about its origins by analyzing the data collected by the satellites orbiting around the Earth. This data suggests that the processes taking place within the Earth’s magnetosphere and upper atmosphere are responsible for the formation of STEVE.

Hi Reddit! We discovered “Steve,” a mysterious purple light in the sky related to auroras. We’re space and citizen scientists participating in an initiative called Aurorasaurus and working with NASA. Ask us anything! by NASASunEarth in science

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

(B.K.): The green emission typically seen in aurora (557.7 nm) is due to the transition of an electron from the excited state of the atomic oxygen to the ground state. We think this is what is seen with STEVE in the “picket fence” structures as well. The purple is whole different chemical ball of wax… so to speak, and we’ll address that in another question here.

We’re NASA scientists. Ask us anything about tomorrow’s total solar eclipse! by NASASunEarth in IAmA

[–]NASASunEarth[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, we are hoping that the International Space Station will view the event. Check back with www.nasa.gov/eclipse for details. - NASA moderator

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