No one knew what to call the mysterious strip of purple and green light that appeared in the sky. So, it was dubbed Steve.
According to a report from the European Space Agency (ESA), its citizen astronomers were the first one to get a glimpse of the strange ribbon of light. Now, the agency’s magnetic field Swarm mission has also encountered Steve and is beginning to play their part in understanding this spectacular new-found feature of the northern lights.
“In 1997 we had just one all-sky imager in North America to observe the aurora borealis from the ground,” University of Calgary professor Eric Donovan explained at a recent Swarm science meeting in Canada. “Back then we would be lucky if we got one photograph a night of the aurora taken from the ground that coincides with an observation from a satellite. Now, we have many more all-sky imagers and…
