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Published Nov. 9, 2023, 12:41 p.m. ET
That purple-ish glow in the night sky? That’s STEVE.
STEVE, or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement, is an atmospheric phenomenon that accompanies auroras, such as an aurora borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights, which have been spotted this week across the US.
The purple light streak, often bordered by patches of green, is a result of magnetic storms, which are commonly caused by outbursts of plasma from the sun and have been known to disturb GPS systems or power grids on Earth.
Energized particles emitted from the sun hurtling toward Earth are redirected by our magnetic field toward our poles, creating auroras as they enter the atmosphere, according to Space.com.
STEVE is not created from charged particles but is actually a gas — the mauve stream forming as a result of the hot atmosphere and rapid travel, occurring at an altitude of 62 to 124 miles.
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Magnetic storms cause such rivers of scorching, fast-moving gas.
“The atmosphere is heated by very fast plasma streams that collide with the neutral gas,” Toshi Nishimura, an associate professor at Boston University’s College of Engineering and co-author of the initial report about STEVE in 2018, told Space.com.
STEVE first caught the eye of “citizen scientists” between 2015 and 2016 — they posted the brilliant celestial sightings online.
Originally, STEVE was referred to as just Steve, named after the terrifying, insurmountable hedge from the cartoon flick “Over the Hedge” to make it seem less menacing.
Later, researchers reverse-engineered the name, making Steve into an acronym.
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Elizabeth MacDonald, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and 2018 STEVE report co-author, has praised the amateur aurora seekers, who were imperative to the research of the phenomenon.
They were able to capture what dedicated scientific cameras could not because STEVE appears on wavelengths different from the usual auroras, MacDonald told Space.com.
STEVE was most recently spotted by eager stargazers in the UK and parts of Europe last weekend, with experts expecting to see the glowing spectacle more often due to a predicted increase in solar activity.
