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. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play
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