Scientists are obsessed with a purple ribbon in the sky named 'Steve'

Brett Molina | USA TODAY

The ribbons of purple and white were fascinating enough to experts that they earned their own nickname: Steve.

According to NASA, between 2015 and 2016, several "citizen scientists" captured reports of these ribbons in online forums and with a project tracking auroras, displays of light usually seen at night.

However, a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests Steve – which stands for Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement – isn't an aurora but a different celestial phenomenon.

Researchers in the study analyzed an event involving Steve in 2008 and found the atmospheric process generating its lights is different than an aurora.

"Right now, we know very little about it," Bea Gallardo-Lacourt, a space physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada and lead author of the study, said in a statement. "And that's the cool thing, because this has been known by photographers for decades. But for the scientists, it's completely unknown."

Instead of calling it an aurora, researchers in the study refer to Steve as "skyglow," or a glowing light in the sky. Their next step is learning where exactly Steve's light originates.

Reports by citizens over the years on Steve fueled a study published in March in the journal Science Advances shedding light on this new "optical structure in the upper atmosphere."

A citizen science project funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation called Aurorasaurus has been gathering photos and reports on Steve to learn exactly what is causing the phenomenon.

"This is a light display that we can observe over thousands of kilometers from the ground," Liz MacDonald, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and head of the Aurorasaurus team, said in March. "It corresponds to something happening way out in space. Gathering more data points on STEVE will help us understand more about its behavior and its influence on space weather."

Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.