A rare and mysterious phenomenon is creating a light show in the UK sky

It may look like the aurora borealis, but this beautiful red light appearing in the UK sky is something much more mysterious. STEVE, which stands for Speed ​​Thermo Emission Enhancement, generates horizontal lights, usually red, in the sky.

The event was recorded by photographer Ian Sprott and was seen above Dunstanburgh Castle, in Northumberland, northern England, last Monday (7).

The phenomenon was discovered recently and was first seen in 2015. According to scientists, although it may look like it, STEVE is not a type of aurora – the multi-colored glow that appears at high latitudes when particles of solar radiation collide with atoms in the atmosphere. upper ground. . But it is a mistake for many publications to insist on this classification.

What is the Steve phenomenon?

While the aurora tends to flash in broad bands of green, blue or reddish light, depending on its altitude, STEVE typically appears as a single band of lavender-white light extending hundreds of kilometers. Sometimes this light strip is accompanied by a green line of jagged lights, resembling a fence.

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Furthermore, the aurora appears in the sky at a much lower altitude than the aurora borealis, in a part of the atmosphere known as the subauroral zone, where radiation-laden solar particles are very unlikely to invade.

According to researchers in a 2022 study, STEVE’s “plausible generating mechanism” could be the interaction between fast-moving ion streams generated by geomagnetic storms and nitrogen molecules in the subauroral region. When hot charged particles collide with nitrogen, the particles become excited, emitting light to release energy.

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