In 2013, dashcams proved to be crucial to understanding a small asteroid that struck Russia. STEVEs are far from the only important scientific finds that have been made on commercial devices. “As commercial cameras become more sensitive and increased excitement about the aurora spreads via social media, citizen scientists can act as a ‘mobile sensor network,’ and we are grateful to them for giving us data to analyze,” says Toshi Nishimura, a space physicist at Boston University and lead author of the new study, in the release. The teacher presents the students with a strange thing they have observed. Learning about them has been an effort showcasing the strength of amateur-professional scientific alliances. A scientific phenomenon is an observable event that can be investigated and. Scientists completely missed STEVEs until amateurs brought the odd lights to their attention. “The precipitating electrons that cause the green picket fence are thus aurora, though this occurs outside the auroral zone, so it’s indeed unique.” What's the distinction? “Aurora is defined by particle precipitation, electrons and protons actually falling into our atmosphere, whereas the STEVE atmospheric glow comes from heating without particle precipitation,” says Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, a space physicist at the University of Calgary and coauthor of the new study, in the release. How Dueling Magnetic Fields Give Us Auroras.Scientists Want to Make an Artificial Aurora.The Northern (and Southern) Lights Explained.It's a process similar to what causes auroras, but in a different location. High-frequency waves can knock out of the magnetosphere to the ionosphere, which creates the green picket fences. While the river of charged particles is colliding in the ionosphere, in the magnetosphere, energetic electrons are streaming around Earth. Incandescent light bulbs work in much the same way, where electricity heats a filament of tungsten until it’s hot enough to glow.īut STEVEs contain multitudes. Here's what probably happens during a STEVE, according to the press release: A flowing “river” of charged particles in Earth’s ionosphere collide, creating friction that heats the particles and causes them to emit mauve light.

So scientists analyzed data from satellite footage of STEVE events between April 2008 and May 2016 to measure electric and magnetic fields in the magnetosphere.Īfter matching the data with amateur photos, the scientists-an international team from the U.S. The ionosphere overlaps with Earth’s magnetosphere, the area of space surrounding our planet that's controlled by its magnetic field. Their best guess was that a STEVE originated in the ionosphere, an upper part of the Earth's atmosphere. Some of your readers may, perhaps, be able to give instances of a similar occurrence, unique both in my experience and reading.Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Elmo's Fire, so well known to sailors during thunderstorms within the Tropics. Then and since I have puzzled myself to account for the strange phenomenon, and can only imagine it to have been a peculiar manifestation of St. I felt no unusual sensation beyond the stinging of the hail, and no sound except that of the storm. When I walked on they continued with me for two or three minutes, disappearing only when the violence of the blast was somewhat diminished. Though I turned about pretty smartly, and shifted my position, I found it impossible to shake off the flickering flames. It seemed to proceed from every part of my clothes, especially on the side least exposed to the hail, and more particularly and brightly from my arm, shoulder, and head. At the same instant I found myself enveloped in a sheet of pale flickering white light. The most probable cause of this is that sweat glands and oils from your body are bonding with the toilet seat that causes the odd color change. All at once I was startled by a vivid flash of lightning close at hand, but without thunder. With the darkness came a tremendous shower of hail. At eight o'clock the sky was fairly clear, when a black cloud sprang up in the north, and the night became suddenly intensely dark. The gale subsided considerably about five o'clock in the afternoon. ON February 18 this part of Scotland was visited by a furious gale of wind, rain, sleet, and hail.

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