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1/13 Two years on a cold dark crusade documenting 'Steve'. 50 long nights awake in remote frozen wastelands with temperatures as low as -40C (-40F). Steve is my signature piece on @superrare Let me explain why this purple ribbon is so special, why it's so important👇.
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2/13 What is Steve? Most have never heard of it; those that have might just think it's an Aurora. Steve is an east/west phenomena at lower latitudes than you typically see an Aurora. It is caused by a 25km wide ribbon of hot plasma at 3000C, flowing at a speed of 6 km/s.
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3/13 While occurring with the space weather that brings an Aurora; Steve is not an Aurora as it is not generated through through the precipitation of electrons. Steve runs East/West while an auroral beams runs North/South along the magnetitic field lines to the poles.
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4/13 In this shot looking West you can see the purple/white/mauve band of Steve crossing the sky East/West. The green of the Aurora Borealis is to the right (predominantly North of frame).
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5/13 For unknown reasons Steve is sometimes but not always associated with a Picket Fence aurora. The picket fence always forms below Steve and is caused by electron precipitation so it is considered an aurora.
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6/13 I was fortunate enough to capture Steve while observing the sky to the South while at Berg Lake. As I was physically between Steve and the Aurora, I was clear of any light interference from the Aurora to the North.
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7/13 After going viral and being seen by some astrophysicists the raw shots and associated time lapse became the foundation of a physics paper that I coauthored called 'The Vertical Distribution of the Optical Emissions of a Steve and Picket Fence Event'.
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8/13 Steve is only newly being characterised by the science community. The paper advanced our understanding of these phenomena by narrowing down the altitude extent of the Steve and picket fence emissions.
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9/13 You can find a summary to the paper up on the European Space Agency (ESA) website here. https://eo4society.esa.int/2019/10/11/the-vertical-distribution-of-the-optical-emissions-of-a-steve-and-picket-fence-event/ The full paper is available via that link also. Screen shots below from both ESA and NASA websites.
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