The northern and southern lights that shine in green, red, and purple hues of light in the night sky are often found in the wishlists of many travel enthusiasts worldwide. Commonly known as the auroras, these lights are sometimes of mauve and white streaks and are not exactly the auroras. These disguised aurora lights are called Steve and a glowing green is called “picket fence”.

They’re different types of brightness in the night sky and it’s important to know that they are their unique forms of illumination and not exactly auroras.

Gasque has allegedly teamed up with researchers at the university’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) to suggest that NASA should send a rocket into the center of the aurora to investigate and confirm her hypothesis.

It is yet to be seen if NASA would launch such a rocket to investigate Gasque’s hypothesis.

Appearance of Steve and Picket Fence – Reason

The occurrence of vibrant auroras along with Steve and Picket Fence has increased. This increase is due to the sun entering an active phase in its 11-year cycle of solar storms and coronal mass ejections.

Steve is an acronym that stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.

In a recent paper published in the Geophysical Research Letters, Gasque explained the science behind the picket fence. Gasque will discuss these findings on December 14 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Gasque figured out that electric fields aligned with Earth’s magnetic field, occurring in an upper atmosphere region farther south than where auroras usually form, could create the colors seen in the picket fence.

“This could change how we understand the light and energy in auroras in some cases,” Gasque said in an official statement.

Brian Harding, an SSL assistant research physicist and co-author of the paper, mentioned, “Claire’s paper is really interesting because it reveals some very unusual physics that the Steve spectrum has hinted at for a couple of years. We just didn’t know what it meant.” He added that Gasque’s paper demonstrates how these parallel electric fields might explain the unique spectrum seen in Steve.