Mysterious ribbons of grayish white have been spotted woven through the northern lights.
New images reveal that these ghostly glows can appear tucked within or curled up beside red and green auroras. But the pale lights are not auroras themselves, researchers reported December 30 in Nature Communications. Instead, they may arise through a similar process to the one underlying the mauve light streak known as STEVE.
“These observations remind us just how much we still have to learn about the fundamental processes that shape the aurora,” says Claire Gasque, a space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley not involved in the work.
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