{"id":9499,"date":"2025-01-11T21:09:49","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T02:09:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9499"},"modified":"2025-01-11T21:09:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T02:09:49","slug":"what-is-that-ucalgary-scientists-explain-white-patch-that-appears-near-northern-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/?p=9499","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What Is That?\u2019 UCalgary Scientists Explain White Patch That Appears near Northern Lights"},"content":{"rendered":"
Images of the aurora borealis showing the structured continuum emission<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A whitish, grey patch that sometimes appears in the night sky alongside the northern lights has been explained for the first time by researchers at the University of Calgary.<\/p>\n

The article, which was published<\/a> <\/strong>in the journal Nature Communications<\/em>, explores a \u201cstructured continuum emission\u201d that\u2019s associated with aurora borealis.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019d see this dynamic green aurora, you\u2019d see some of the red aurora in the background and, all of a sudden, you\u2019d see this structured \u2013 almost like a patch \u2013 grey-toned or white toned-emission connected to the aurora,\u201d says Dr. Emma Spanswick<\/a>, PhD, lead author on the paper and an associate professor with the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the first response of any scientist is, \u2018Well, what is that?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Spanswick says the white patch has been referenced in scientific papers before, but it has never been explained.<\/p>\n

Her team\u2019s paper concludes it\u2019s \u201cmost certainly a heat source\u201d and says it suggests that the aurora borealis are more complex than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Spanswick says the discovery was made possible because an advancement in camera technology allows both amateur photographers and scientists to see true colour images of the night sky.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone has noticed the advancement in digital photography. Your cellphone can now take pictures of the aurora,\u201d she says. \u201cThat has flowed to the commercial sensor market now. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose types of sensors can now be found in more commercial, more robust sensors that we would use in science.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s research came after there was a renewed interest in continuum emission with the discovery and observations of the long, glowing ribbon of purple light known as STEVE \u2013 or Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are similarities between what we\u2019re seeing now and STEVE,\u201d explains Spanswick. \u201cSTEVE manifests itself as this mauve or grey-toned structure.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, the elevation of the spectrum between the two is very similar but this, because of its association with dynamic aurora, it\u2019s almost embedded in the aurora. It\u2019s harder to pick out if you were to look at it, whereas STEVE is separate from the aurora \u2013 a big band crossing the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest research is also significant because it includes three UCalgary students, including undergraduate Josh Houghton who was initially hired as an intern on the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was still learning things at the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI had just started my internship, and I very quickly got involved. It\u2019s just very, very cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spanswick says Houghton did a lot of the analysis on the research, which led to his participation in the Nature paper as an undergraduate student.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s had one heck of an internship experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Houghton will continue the research as part of his undergrad honours thesis, before taking on his master\u2019s degree at UCalgary next year.<\/p>\n

The research was made possible by the Transition Region Explorer<\/a> (TREx), which is a UCalgary project jointly funded by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation<\/a>, the Government of Alberta and the Canadian Space Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The TREx RGB and Spectograph instruments are operated and maintained by Space Environment Canada with the support of the Canadian Space Agency through its Geospace Observatory<\/a> (GO) Canada initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A whitish, grey patch that sometimes appears in the night sky alongside the northern lights has been explained for the first time by researchers at the University of Calgary. The article, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, explores a \u201cstructured continuum emission\u201d that\u2019s associated with aurora borealis. \u201cYou\u2019d see this dynamic green aurora, you\u2019d see some…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":9501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/earimediaprodweb.azurewebsites.net\/Api\/v1\/Multimedia\/ca9c6c29-0bb5-410c-a175-0e989db55230\/Rendition\/low-res\/Content\/Public","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9502,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9499\/revisions\/9502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceandplanetarynewswire.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}