Aurora chasers have discovered a new type of northern lights

[neversickanymore]

CALGARY ? Amateur scientists in Canada have helped researchers discover a new type of northern lights.

The glowing ribbon of purple ? and sometimes green ? that runs east-west in the night sky has been observed and photographed by aurora borealis chasers for years.
?My involvement is being the goofball who named it Steve,? said Chris Ratzlaff, a Calgary photographer who?s a co-author of a research paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

The luminous light, distinct from traditional aurora, was previously undocumented in scientific literature and little was known about how it formed.
What has been learned by scientists at NASA and various universities is that the phenomenon is associated with a subauroral ion drift ? a powerful current created by charged particles in the Earth?s upper atmosphere. The arc is an optical manifestation of that ion drift.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canad...er-a-new-type-of-northern-lights-dubbed-steve

 

[Xorkoth]

I've always wanted to see the Aurora Borealis (or Australis)... I've seen faint flickers of it in northern Wisconsin but never the full-blown thing.

 

[Limpet_Chicken]

Same, I'm in the UK myself, seen flickers of green and purple across the sky, after receiving tipoffs that there may be an aurora, taking off outside at something like 6-7am (ideal for me actually, I prefer to do my lab work and anything I have to do that doesn't de facto require open service outlets of some sort, after dark, I've always had a squirrely sleep cycle, and now that I've had the dubious honour of having my cornea melted off, that sealed the deal. I don't go out into the light if I can help it.

 

[Shady's Fox]

man like i saw a lot of them but let's talk bout this little anomaly kay. Although maya people once belived that they we're signs send by ancient ones in term of who to say and who to sacrifice