The Vertical Distribution of the Optical Emissions of a Steve and Picket Fence Event

I am humbled to have been involved with some of the amazing work that is currently being done to characterise the phenomena called STEVE. I managed to not only have one of my photos used on the cover of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, but I am also a co-author on the paper “The Vertical Distribution of the Optical Emissions of a Steve and Picket Fence Event”. The research lead by fellow William Archer used stills from a time-lapse I took looking south over Mt Robson of STEVE which consisted of 105 images taken in just over an hour. As I had so many consecutive images of the event they were able to source some time matched images of the event from significantly different geographical locations to the south (with the help @AlbertaAuroraChasers ). Using these simultaneous photographic observations taken hundreds of kilometres apart it was concluded that Steve and the picket fence extend vertically along similar magnetic field lines, with Steve’s optical emissions ranging from 130 to 270 km in altitude and the picket fence’s emissions ranging from 95 to 150 km altitude.

Thanks to the team of people involved with this paper (scientists from University of Saskatchewan, University of Western Ontario, NASA/GSFC, The New Jersey Institute of Technology, University of Calgary and Alberta Aurora Chasers) but particularly to the lead author William Archer for involving me along with Bea Gallardo-Lacourt for connecting us together. Also a big thanks to Dale Eurich and Janis Smith for also having their cameras pointed up at the sky in wonder on that same night !

You can see a summary of the paper up on the European Space Agency site here ; and find the full paper here.

You can see the mapping of the two photos here

And the resultant altitude determination

For those new to STEVE, it is a relatively uncharacterised nighttime optical phenomenon shown to be associated with intense subauroral ion drifts (SAID). The phenomenon is described as a purple band of light equatorward of aurora and it is sometimes accompanied by periodic green emissions termed “picket fence”. You can also check out my post on Who is Steve which has a few other photos.

This is my shot used as the cover

And this is part of the raw timelapse

If you would like to learn a little bit more about my background in photography you can read the interview @photofeed did with me here.

Robert Downie
Love Life, Love Photography

_{All images in this post were taken by and remain the Copyright of Robert Downie - http://www.robertdowniephotography.com}