The solar wind caused an unusual auroras

Last Saturday, during a geomagnetic storm caused by solar wind flow, the photographer Harlan Thomas is located among the sand pillars Judus in the canadian province of Alberta, hoping to catch on camera Aurora. And that's what he saw.

"Steve Came! I photographed him over the silhouettes Hudus close to Jupiter and green lights," says Thomas.

Steve is a purple arc across the sky For many years observers in the Northern sky reported about this band of luminous, sometimes dancing among regular lights. It is often called the "proton arc", while the researchers did not pay attention that protons probably do not have to this phenomenon is irrelevant. Therefore, the members of the Alberta Aurora Chasers group gave her a new name: "Steve".

The physics underlying the purple tape, unclear until the end. But recently one of the satellites of the ESA Swarm mission met with Steve and provided some clues.

"Since the satellite went right through Steve's device, the fixing electric field, showed a very clear change, reports Eric Donovan of the University of calgary. — The temperature at altitude 300 km above the Earth's surface has jumped up to 3000 °C, and it was discovered that the ribbon strip with a width of 25 km flows to the North-West at a speed of about 6 km/s compared to a speed of about 10 m/s at the sides".

Visit Steve albert may 20, coincided with another exotic form of auroras: green "picket fence". It is believed that these vertical rays follow the magnetic field lines connecting the Earth with the cosmos. Glowing green pillars indicate where the beams of energetic particles are directed to the Earth's upper atmosphere magnetic fields.

And Steve, and the picket fence is a threadlike structure associated with rays or bars of gas. Coincidence? Hardly. On pictures they often appear together, which might be another key.

This is the second time in three nights, when Thomas saw Steve. "He also spent 15 minutes with me on may 17," — says the photographer. Next weekend a possible new meeting, because the solar wind continues to attack the Earth.

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»