Europe: A Peculiar Purple Beam, Steve Lights-Up Northern Europe | Astronomers Explain |OneIndia News - video Dailymotion

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Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are massive plasma bubbles ejected from the Sun, occurring on November 4 and 5, and coincide with two other CMEs hitting Earth. Steve,the mysterious purple beam was derived from a movie Over the Hedge,meaning Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements.    #europe #purplebeam #steveauroralight #stevenorthernlights #stevelights #stevelightsinsky #lightsteve #lightsteveineurope #northernlightsteve #europelight #stevelighteurope

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00:00 Steve, an enigmatic luminal shaft of deep purple light was seen across Europe on Sunday,

00:07 November 5.

00:08 A new study suggests that the purple ribbons of light accompanying auroras known as Steve

00:14 are more mysterious than previously thought.

00:17 The name was derived from a joke in the movie "Over the Hedge" and later shortened to

00:23 "Steve", meaning "Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancements".

00:27 A new study has found that the purple ribbons of light that appear alongside auroras are

00:32 not auroras, but something completely unknown.

00:36 The researchers discovered that solar particles hitting the ionosphere do not power the violet

00:41 vertical streaks.

00:44 The purple light was initially believed to be proton arcs, but Eric Donovan, a physicist

00:50 at the University of Calgary and co-author of the study in Geophysical Research Letters,

00:56 notes that protons create a very diffused light that is purely picked up by camera,

01:01 while Steve is very bright.

01:04 Steve, the purple band in the sky, differs from the aurora in observable and specialized

01:10 ways.

01:11 It appears overhead as a purple band, sometimes buried like a picket fence.

01:16 Steve's science further differentiates it from the aurora, which is believed to be a

01:20 product of solar radiation and Earth's atmosphere.

01:24 Steve is optical phenomena like the aurora, but this thin, arcing sphere of lavender lights

01:30 always orients itself on an east-west axis and show up at latitudes much closer to the

01:36 equator than the usual northern or southern lights.

01:41 Steve is caused by a hot ionized gas, usually from volatile solar storms.

01:45 Scientists can't explain why it travels through lower latitudes, but it breaks through our

01:51 atmosphere at 13,300 miles per hour, generating heat and lightening up surrounding gases.

01:59 Space weather is primarily caused by solar flares and coronal mass injections.

02:05 The researchers wanted to see if the same conditions that produce auroras also produce

02:10 Steve's.

02:11 They compared images of a Steve from March 2008 captured using ground-based cameras with

02:17 images gathered by NOAA's Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellite 17, which passed over

02:23 the same area and collected data about the ionosphere.

02:27 The data shows that the Steve appeared at a time when charged particles were not deluging

02:32 the ionosphere, indicating that the same process that powers aurora does not bring Steve's

02:37 to life.

02:38 Instead, it is a distinct phenomena from an aurora that, for now, is simply classified

02:44 as a sky globe.

02:47 Clouds have been streaking across the sky for millennia, but it took the development

02:53 of several new technologies for humanity to notice them.

02:56 In the last 20 years, Canada has gone from having one whole sky imager to more than 100,

03:03 which means there's more data about what's going on above us.

03:07 Crowdsourcing tools like Aurorasaurus and aurora watching groups on Facebook and other

03:12 platforms have also improved our view to the sky.

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03:20 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Europe: A Peculiar Purple Beam, Steve Lights-Up Northern Europe | Astronomers Explain |OneIndia News

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