A new discovery in the night sky sparked the interest of Aurora photographers and night sky watchers. The astronomical phenomenon beautifies the night sky linings reminiscent to the image of the goddess of beauty. The illumination of the southern skies is known as Steve.
The name Steve is a borrowed nickname from a movie "Over the Hedge". Characters in the movie call things "Steve" if they are not sure what it is or where it's from. Aurora chasers thought that Steve is a proton arc. When an associate professor from the University of Calgary, Eric Donovan, saw the photographs, he was sure that the images and the night sky beauty are not proton arcs.
To confirm what Steve was, Donovan asked the help of the European Space Agency, Swarm, to help them identify what Steve really was. SWARM is an interconnection of satellites that study the magnetic field of the planet.
After thorough analysis from the ground and flight movements of the Swarm satellite around the emission of lights, The phenomenon is proven to be an instance of Steve. The Swarm satellite, however, noticed a change in temperature between the earth and the flight path of where Steve lights up. The delta temperature was determined to be 3000 degrees C, reports Science World.
It was also documented that Steve is not at all rare. It just wasn't noticed before. Steve actually illuminates the beautiful evening sky when the sun's charged particles bombard the upper atmosphere of the earth. These particles interact with the earth's charged particles giving the beauty that Steve adorns by night. The lighted creation playing in the night sky of green and red is the projection of these lights or it must have been Steve, as reported by Yahoo News.
Aurora Chasers and Nightlight citizens like the name Steve for the phenomenon that beautifies the night sky. Others even thought of expanding it by assigning meaning to the acronym STEVE. How about Sudden Thermal Emission from Velocity Enhancement (S.T.E.V.E.)?
