Something cheerful, and nice to look at

[redbird]

Amateur sky watchers in Finland have found a new kind of aurora. The amateurs not only got the professionals' attention after asking "what are these?" they worked together to take carefully coordinated photos that made it possible to identify these auroras' altitude.

via conuly, whose link notes "Not Steve, another one." These newly studied auroras have been named "the dunes" (though I don't see the resemblance). Compared to "Steve" and "Hanny's Thingie" (named for a Galaxy Zoo volunteer), "dunes" is downright straightforward.

Comments

[conuly]

I didn't even know about Hanny's! It does seem to me that the skies are one of the most studied aspects of earth over the whole of human history. How are these auroras only now being formally documented? One, I can believe. (edit: got it, read link, Hanny's =- not an aurora. Still.)

[redbird]

Sorry, I should have given more info. Hanny's Voorwerp (which is approximately Dutch for "thingy") is a quasar echo, a very long way from here and "about the size of a small galaxy." She was one of many volunteers looking through photographic images, classifying them; sometimes the volunteers would ask the professionals "what's this?" and very occasionally the reply was "we don't know."

[minoanmiss]

*makes a happy noise at both the science and the beauty*

[kaberett]

Oh the paper is SO COOL.

[kaberett]

Also, re the dunes: it's to the ripply sort of effect in the foreground of e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune#/media/File:Morocco_Africa_Flickr_Rosino_December_2005_84514010.jpg -- the features under discussion are labelled in magenta in Figure 1 of the paper, https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/cms/asset/0ff152e1-3ffe-49dd-bfbe-12c483a8fc7e/aga220017-fig-0001-m.png

[redbird]

Oh thank you!