Every once in a while we see an aurora photograph that looks more like aliens than northern lights. It probably wasn’t photo-shopped (because why?) When a group of “aurora chasers” in Canada would see this bright arc, they didn’t know what to call it either. So they named it Steve. Aurora are caused by geomagnetic storms which occur when the sun blasts high-energy particles toward Earth.

Source: Washington Post April 26, 2017 19:41 UTC