Rare ?

[LDW1]

Down here in my lower latitude of 46° in Canada, using my $99 Kodak point & shoot camera doing some short exposure ap I managed to catch a small, short Steve which I had never heard of before as the lights are pretty infrequent this far south. But this nite they were pretty bright and expansive. Up in the farther northern latitudes where they are common do the fortunate viewers / ap'ers of those skies see those wonderful Steve's quite often, are they quite common ?

[LDW1]

The main reason I started this post is to draw attention to these unique phenomena and who might have been lucky enough to have seen them.

[Knighty2112]

Never heard the term for a steve before. Great photo. Well captured. 👍🏻

[Stu]

Nice catch! I had never heard of a Steve before, or should I write STEVE? A Google search tells me it is a Sudden (or Strong) Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. Not sure I’m any the wiser for that. Some variation on an Aurora I guess?

Anyway, unusual and well captured. That’s my learning for the day 👍

[LDW1]

4 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Never heard the term for a steve before. Great photo. Well captured. 👍🏻

Google it and view some of the online photos, its pretty interesting. Maybe a bit of a challenge ?

[LDW1]

4 hours ago, Stu said:

Nice catch! I had never heard of a Steve before, or should I write STEVE? A Google search tells me it is a Sudden (or Strong) Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement. Not sure I’m any the wiser for that. Some variation on an Aurora I guess?

Anyway, unusual and well captured. That’s my learning for the day 👍

Did you have a look at some of the online photos on various astro / aurora sites ? They are beautiful !  And it is spealt with all capitals.

[LDW1]

4 hours ago, Knighty2112 said:

Never heard the term for a steve before. Great photo. Well captured. 👍🏻

It was plain luck, it all happened pretty fast with a single 13 second exposure off my dock. They were pretty nice that nite.

[Pete Presland]

I have heard of it before and have seen a few videos in the mainstream Astro media outlets. Seems to be quite a modern phenomena, related to Airglow and not Aurora. I am sure i read another name last year for a similar type of phenomena. 

[LDW1]

But they seem to appear at the same time as the northern lites, most pictures of them show both. Whether they are directly related will have to be looked into a bit.

Edited April 7, 2022 by LDW1