                    APOD: 2017 October 14 - All Sky Steve

                         Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! [1] Each day a different image or photograph of our
 fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a
                           professional astronomer.

                                2017 October 14
                                      [2]
                                All-Sky Steve
    Image Credit & Copyright [3] : Alan Dyer [4] , Amazingsky.com, TWAN [5]

Explanation: Familiar green and red [6]  tinted auroral emission floods the
sky along the northern (top) horizon in this fish-eye panorama projection from
September 27. On the mild, clear evening the Milky Way tracks through the
zenith of a southern Alberta sky and ends where the six-day-old Moon sets in
the southwest. The odd, isolated, pink and whitish arc across the south has
come to be known as Steve. The name was given to the phenomenon by the Alberta
Aurora Chasers [7]  Facebook group who had recorded appearances of the
aurora-like feature. Sometimes mistakenly [8] identified as a proton aurora or
proton arc, the mysterious Steve arcs seem associated with aurorae but appear
closer to the equator than the auroral curtains. Widely documented by citizen
scientists [9] and recently directly explored by a Swarm mission satellite
[10] , Steve arcs have been measured as thermal emission from flowing gas
rather than emission excited by energetic electrons. Even though a
reverse-engineered acronym that fits the originally friendly name [11]  is
Sudden Thermal Emission from Velocity Enhancement, his origin is still
mysterious.

                  Tomorrow's picture: the origin of gold [12]

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    Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff [24] (MTU [25] ) & Jerry Bonnell [26]
                                  (UMCP [27] )
          NASA Official:  Phillip Newman Specific rights apply [28] .
              NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices [29]
              A service of: ASD [30]  at NASA [31]  / GSFC [32]
                           & Michigan Tech. U. [33]
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Site notes:
  [1] archivepix.html
  [2] image/1710/SteveAuroralArc_allskyproj.jpg
  [3] lib/about_apod.html#srapply
  [4] http://www.amazingsky.com/
  [5] http://www.twanight.org/
  [6] http://spaceweathergallery.com/aurora_gallery.html
  [7] https://www.facebook.com/groups/AlbertaAuroraChasers/
  [8] ap150803.html
  [9] http://blog.aurorasaurus.org/?p=449
  [10] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Observing_the_Earth/Swarm/
When_Swarm_met_Steve
  [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amwaFNZYUUY
  [12] ap171015.html
  [13] ap171013.html
  [14] archivepix.html
  [15] lib/apsubmit2015.html
  [16] lib/aptree.html
  [17] http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/apod/apod_search
  [18] calendar/allyears.html
  [19] /apod.rss
  [20] lib/edlinks.html
  [21] lib/about_apod.html
  [22] http://asterisk.apod.com/discuss_apod.php?date=171014
  [23] ap171015.html
  [24] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/faculty/Nemiroff.html
  [25] http://www.phy.mtu.edu/
  [26] http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/jbonnell/www/bonnell.html
  [27] http://www.astro.umd.edu/
  [28] lib/about_apod.html#srapply
  [29] http://www.nasa.gov/about/highlights/HP_Privacy.html
  [30] http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/
  [31] http://www.nasa.gov/
  [32] http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/
  [33] http://www.mtu.edu/
