For years, sky gazers in Canada have been training their camera lenses on a wispy strand of purple light running across the country from east to west, sometimes flanked by neon green fingers that appear to wave.

It looks like a piece of the aurora borealis, or the northern lights: blushes of pink or green that illuminate the night sky at high latitudes, caused by solar particles interacting with the earth’s magnetic field.

But this strip of light is different. It has always appeared farther south, beyond the bounds of normal aurora sightings.

Amateur aurora watchers have taken hundreds of photographs of this adjacent phenomenon, often drawing out its fluorescent colors with long exposures or photo editing. They called it Steve, as a sort of place-holder until a more formal name could be found.