Amateur Skywatchers Spot New Atmospheric Phenomenon

Its name is Steve, and it’s more common than you might think



[font size=1]Meet Steve—a strange band of light first spotted by amateur skywatchers. (ESA/Dave Markel Photography )[/font]

By Erin Blakemore
smithsonian.com
2 hours ago

Facebook is a place to share dramas and dog pictures, hit “like” and watch weird events unfold live. But for a group of amateur skywatchers, the social network is also a place to share information about what people spy in the sky. And thanks to a group of Canadian aurora enthusiasts, an entirely new type of atmospheric phenomenon has been documented.

It’s called Steve, and its origins are a bit more exciting than its straightforward name would suggest. The Alberta Aurora Chasers Facebook group first spotted the phenomenon last year, reports Gizmodo’s George Dvorsky, and has been collecting photos of Steve sightings. The name Steve reflects their confusion about the phenomenon’s origins, Dvorsky writes, and reminded someone of the movie Over the Hedge “in which a character arbitrarily conjures up the name Steve to describe an object he’s not sure about.”



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Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado-based journalist. Her work has appeared in publications like The Washington Post, TIME, mental_floss, Popular Science and JSTOR Daily. Learn more at erinblakemore.com.
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