A handful of local scientists and civilian photographers in Calgary have been honoured by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for their role in discovering a new phenomenon in the night sky.
In 2014, Chris Ratzlaff, and aurora chaser, snapped a few photos of the aurora borealis. In one of those photos, he captured a distinct purple streak.
Little did he know that it would lead to a significant contribution in the scientific world.
“We take very careful measurements when we're taking out photos and because of the precision of our observations that contributed to the scientific discovery involved in STEVE”, said Ratzlaff.
STEVE stands for strong thermal emission velocity enhancement. At the time Ratzlaff said he had no idea what the S.T.E.V.E was. Ratzlaff showed the photos to a scientist at the University of Calgary in 2016.
Eric Donovan, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Calgary, says he had never seen the purple streak before and was sure no one in the science community had a clue what it was.
“That really brought something into the scientific community that was fundamentally new and and a fun thing to explore,” said Donovan
Donavan’s team spent six months finding the purple streak in their own data. Once they were able to do that, they determined that STEVE wasn’t part of the northern lights. Instead, Donavan says it’s burning gas 300 to 500 kilometres in altitude and that’s what causes the sky to glow.
Last year, the team wrote 10 papers on STEVE.
The collaborative effort caught the attention of NASA.
“It's pretty amazing," said Ratzlaff. "As a kid, I'd always been a fan of NASA -- of course."
“To receive an award from NASA for participating in some research and in a discovery, that's pretty awesome.”
