Publication Date:
2019-11-16
Description:
Public participation in research has yielded unanticipated discoveries in many fields, but probably no recent discovery in astronomy and physics owes more to such citizen scientists than the identification of the one-of-a-kind aurora known as STEVE. A display of purple and green lights running east to west, STEVE appears relatively high up in the nighttime sky, for about an hour at a time. People who've been able to photograph it, from locations as far-flung as Tasmania, Michigan, and Scotland, and especially those in the area around Calgary, Alberta, report that the purple part of the aurora resembles a ribbon, with the green part appearing in a series of lines like a picket fencean unforgettable sight.The visible structure of STEVE has been documented by the aurora- chasing public for a long time, but only in the past few years have researchers started to identify the physical processes underlying this unusual sight. It seems that STEVE's visible light occurs along with a subauroral ion drift (SAID), a strong westward flow of charged particles that's still not completely understood.
Keywords:
Astronomy
Type:
GSFC-E-DAA-TN65969
,
American Scientist (ISSN 0003-0996); 106; 5; 283
Format:
application/pdf
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