Tau.Neutrino said:
Mystery of purple lights in sky solved with help from citizen scientists
Notanee Bourassa knew that what he was seeing in the night sky was not normal. Bourassa, an IT technician in Regina, Canada, trekked outside of his home on July 25, 2016, around midnight with his two younger children to show them a beautiful moving light display in the sky—an aurora borealis. He often sky gazes until the early hours of the morning to photograph the aurora with his Nikon camera, but this was his first expedition with his children. When a thin purple ribbon of light appeared and starting glowing, Bourassa immediately snapped pictures until the light particles disappeared 20 minutes later. Having watched the northern lights for almost 30 years since he was a teenager, he knew this wasn’t an aurora. It was something else.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-mystery-purple-sky-citizen-scientists.html#jCp
Ah, the Aurora named Steve hit the forum about 23 April 2017. This is a follow on.
I like this bit: “Perhaps the biggest surprise about Steve appeared in the satellite data. The data showed that Steve comprises a fast moving stream of extremely hot particles called a sub auroral ion drift, or SAID. Scientists have studied SAIDs since the 1970s but never knew there was an accompanying visual effect. The Swarm satellite recorded information on the charged particles’ speeds and temperatures, but does not have an imager aboard.”
And
“Specifically, the aurora and STEVE creation process starts with the Sun sending a surge of its charged particles toward Earth. This surge applies pressure on Earth’s magnetic field, which sends the Sun’s charged particles to the far side of Earth, where it is nighttime. On this far, night side of Earth, Earth’s magnet field forms a distinctive tail. When the tail stretches and elongates, it forces oppositely directed magnetic fields close together that join in an explosive process called magnetic reconnection. Like a stretched rubber band suddenly breaking, these magnetic field lines then snap back toward Earth, carrying charged particles along for the ride. These charged particles slam into the upper atmosphere, causing it to glow and generating the light we see as the aurora — and now possibly STEVE. “