Algonquin
Algonquin Provincial Park is one of the most popular provincial parks in Ontario, and the oldest in Canada. Wildlife abounds in the park, and the landscape, lakes and waterways are breathtaking in all seasons. Algonquin also boasts Bortle 1 dark skies. Spending a night under the stars, taking in the unspoilt natural landscape and listening to loon calls, is a quintessentially Canadian experience.
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Smoke Lake Milky Way
While scouting for locations for Milky Way shots, I found this bay that opened up to Smoke Lake in Algonquin Park in the south-southwest direction. I returned at 1:30 am to take the shot, while the Milky Way lined up with the opening to the lake. Fog was rolling off the surface of the lake due to the unseasonably cold air (7 degrees Celsius) for a mid-summer night. The shoreline and the fog were lit by two flood lights from the shore – no light-painting needed.
The sky was a 17-frame stack (255 seconds in total) and the land and lake were from a single 15-second exposure.
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Airglow over Misty Canisbay Lake
A one-hour star trails session taken over Canisbay Lake, Algonquin Park got an extra shot of vibrance from airglow. While the airglow wasn’t visible to the eyes, it readily registered on the camera. Even the fog on the lake picked up the colour.
Airglow is a type of chemiluminescence – the emission of light from chemical interactions between oxygen and nitrogen atoms, and other free radicals created from solar energy in the upper atmosphere. While airglow may look somewhat similar to aurora, the energy producing aurora comes from solar wind particles directed towards Earth’s atmosphere through interacting with Earth’s magnetic field.
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Moonrise, Lake of Two Rivers
This high dynamic range (HDR) composite image captured the summer full moon rising over an unnamed island in Lake of Two Rivers.
Even on a day when the full moon washed out most of the features in the night sky, there were opportunities for astro-landscape photography in Algonquin Park. Paying close attention to time of twilight, moonrise / moonset, and orientation of celestial objects and landscape, allowed me to capture moments of beauty at the right time and the right place.
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Northern Lights Reflection, Costello Creek
The northern lights were fleeting this night, but when they were shining, colourful red and green pillars filled the northern horizon and added vibrant hues to the Costello Creek in Algonquin Park. Northern lights were not in the forecast for the night, but when the Kp and Bz readings (both indicators of potential aurora activities) unexpectedly turned favourable, we ditched our plan for Milky Way photography and pivoted to northern lights, and we were not disappointed.
The northern Milky Way, Cassiopeia and the Double Cluster in Perseus are to the right of the aurora. The Andromeda Galaxy is a small fuzzy patch near the right edge of the image.
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Daybreak by the Lake
Morning fog, Lake of Two Rivers.
