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Scientists say the 'skyglows' represent an entirely new celestial phenomenon Scientists began studying mysterious ribbons of light dubbed 'Steve' in 2016 While they were thought to be auroras, study shows they form differently Experts now say they're a distinct phenomenon that was previously unknown Mysterious purple and white ribbons of light seen dancing across the sky may represent a never-before-identified type of ‘skyglow.’ While amateur photographers have been documenting the phenomenon for decades, scientists only began to study it back in 2016. Initial research suggested the lights, which have come to be known as STEVE, may be a type of...

Is the Sun going to enter a million-degree galactic cloud of interstellar gas soon? Scientists from the Space Research Centre of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Southwest Research Institute, and Boston University suggest that the ribbon of enhanced emissions of energetic neutral atoms, discovered last year by the NASA Small Explorer satellite IBEX, could be explained by a geometric effect coming up because of the approach of the Sun to the boundary between the Local Cloud of interstellar gas and another cloud of a very hot gas called the Local Bubble. If this hypothesis is correct,...