A group of amateur sky watchers in Alberta, Canada just helped scientists discover a new celestial phenomenon, and since nobody knows exactly what it is yet, they've taken to calling it Steve.
Yes, Steve.
Members of the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group have been taking photos of this bright purple streak of light in the skies over Canada for several years now, thinking it was a kind aurora called a proton aurora.
But when they met with Eric Donovan, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary, he pointed out that proton aurora can't be seen by the naked eye, and they had in fact discovered something else.
"It looks a lot like a traditional auroral arc although the color is a bit wrong," Donovan told the Calgary Eyeopener.
"We have seen it from Hudson Bay all the way over to Alaska in our data, and so it's like someone reached in from space and drew a line with a purple magic marker across the Earth."
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Unlike the notoriously ephemeral Northern Lights, Steve doesn't move, making it an excellent subject for photography.
"Unlike the northern lights, Steve is rather static," Photographer Paul Zizka wrote in an Instagram post. "On that occasion, after noticing where the pillar was from a different location, I had time to drive 15 minutes to Vermilion Lakes to line it up with Mount Rundle. It was still hovering in the same spot!"
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While the scientists know that Steve is "a ribbon of very hot and fast moving gas moving at a speed of about six kilometers per second in a westward direction," according to Donovan, they still have more research to do.
In the meantime, the group of aurora chasers started calling it Steve.
It was Chris Ratzlaff, a photographer who runs the Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group, who came up with the name, an idea he got from the animated movie, Over the Hedge.
In it, a group of animals name an unknown entity on the other side of the hedge "Steve."
"It's a completely meaningless name, which is really useful for things that aren't understood," Ratzlaff said.
However, it looks like the name might just stick.
At a meeting last December, another scientist approached Donovan and pointed out that the acronym might actually work.
"He said, 'What you have is a sudden thermal emission through a velocity enhancement, which would make STEVE the actual correct acronym,'" Donovan said.
"I think we might actually leave Steve as the name, and it's nice because it's fun."
Lyndsey Matthews is the Destination News Editor for AFAR; previously she was a Lifestyle Editor across all of Hearst Digital Media's brands, and a digital editor at Martha Stewart Weddings and Travel + Leisure.
