Chasing Steve

For years, an intrepid group of sky gazers scattered across Alberta have been documenting a curious ribbon of purple and green light in their night skies. Extending for hundreds to thousands of kilometres and appearing for for just a few minutes to an hour at a time, the Alberta Aurora Chasers photographed this celestial phenomenon believing it to be a proton arc that came out during solar activity. Affectionately calling it ‘Steve’, it was not until Eric Donovan, a university professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary, and his colleague Liz MacDonald, an astrophysicist at NASA, told them proton arc cannot be seen by the naked eye. They then realized they were witnessing a new phenomenon and had possibly discovered a new type of aurora. The scientific community are now exploring different theories of what the celestial event could be, working in tangent with these new found citizen scientists to explore more details of "Steve" from the data they can acquire from what the photographers are capturing.