Starry Night
Moon, stars, Milky Way, meteors, comets, and northern lights – the night sky is full of wonders.
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Comet C/2023 A3 Meets Milky Way
A cosmic encounter of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS and the Milky Way. Of course, this is true only from the perspective of Earth. The Milky Way is a vast galaxy of almost 100,000 light years across, while the comet was in the inner solar system and its light reached Earth in a matter of minutes.
This image, a stack of 9 individual exposures, was taken on October 24, 2024 by the Lake Huron shore in southern Ontario, 75 minutes after sunset. During this period called the astronomical twilight, stars and the Milky Way appear. The afterglow to the west is very dim to the naked eyes, but on long exposure it is a vibrant yellow and orange, turning into deep blue as one looks up.
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Comet over Moonlit Farmscape
This image of Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was taken on October 16, 2024 in Perth County, southern Ontario. The farmscape was brightly lit by the almost full moon. The image is a stack of 32 individual exposures.
Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet approaches the sun, the ice sublimes, and the dust is pushed away by the solar wind, creating the dust tail which always points away from the sun.
In this image, an “anti-tail” could also be seen pointing in the opposite direction. The anti-tail came from dust left along the orbit of the comet, which became visible as Earth crossed the comet’s orbital plane.
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Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Twilight
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was the brightest comet visible in the northern hemisphere since 1997. The comet reached perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on September 27, 2024. By mid-October, the comet emerged from the glare of the sun, bright enough to be visible to the unaided eyes after sunset, and spotting a long dust tail.
This image was taken on October 17, 2024 in Perth County, southern Ontario, 70 minutes after sunset. 34 exposures were stacked for noise reduction in creating the final image. The dust tail measured approximately 20 degrees in this image. An “anti-tail”, formed by comet dust left along the orbit of the comet, could also be seen pointing in the opposite direction.
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Good Morning, Neowise
Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise was discovered on March 23, 2020 on its way towards the inner solar system. It emerged from perihelion (closest approach to the sun) on July 3 as the brightest comet visible from the northern hemisphere in 23 years, and was visible to the naked eye through the month of July 2020.
This image was taken on July 10, 2020. Neowise was a bright magnitude 2 comet at the time with a beautiful long tail. It had no problem outshining the early morning twilight and the 75% moon, which provided the warm illumination for the farmscape. Neowise is now on its way out of the solar system and will not return for another 7000 years.
Twenty one individual exposures were stacked to create this noise-free image.
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The Great Northern Lights Show, 2024
The aurora activities on May 10-11, 2024, was truly a great northern lights show. A series of violent explosions of a sun spot a few days earlier created the ideal condition for a Kp 8-9 storm (9 being the highest on the Kp scale) that lasted over 24 hours. Millions of people around the globe, including tropical areas like Puerto Rico and Africa, were able to see the aurora with unaided eyes. This image was taken on Pelee Island, the southernmost inhabited land in Canada. Even at such southerly latitude (42 degrees), aurora filled the sky.
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Spring Equinox Aurora
A severe (Kp 8) geomagnetic storm on March 23, 2023, just 3 days after spring equinox, produced colourful aurora visible in the outskirt of the Waterloo Region in Ontario. Aurora is driven by solar activities, which ebb and flow following an 11-year cycle. The current solar cycle is expected to peak some time in 2024. In addition, aurora activities also peak around the spring and fall equinoxes, when the sun’s magnetic field and the earth’s magnetic field are in better alignment, increasing the chance of solar wind particles reaching Earth’s upper atmosphere creating aurora.
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The Night Northern Lights Danced
One doesn’t have to travel to faraway northern locations to see the northern lights. This intense northern lights display was photographed in east Perth County, 20 minutes west of Waterloo, during a strong Kp 7 geomagnetic storm on September 18, 2023.
Northern lights come in different colours. Green is the most common, created when solar wind particles excite oxygen atoms in the atmosphere. Red is seen during more intense storms when oxygen atoms are excited at high altitude.
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The Galaxy We Call Home
The summer Milky Way reveals itself during the evening blue hour.
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Underneath the Summer Sky
Milky Way, our home galaxy, can be seen year-round in the night sky. However, the most spectacular view can be found in the summer months, when the core of the Milky Way can be seen in the southern sky after dusk, as in this quintessentially Canadian nightscape. The summer Milky Way reveals itself during the evening twilight, as the sky darkens into a deep blue, behind the Georgian Bay landscape. The two brightest objects left of the Milky Way core are the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, both near opposition and shining brightly.
A 16-image stack renders the night sky with great details and low noise. The foreground was done with a 32-image stack.
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Midsummer Night’s Wishes
Meteor photography is part planning, part luck, and lots of time spent under the stars – check for moon phase and clear sky, find a safe, dark location (which hopefully is not mosquito-infested), and shoot lots and lots of exposures. For the annual Perseid Meteor Shower I typically capture a few thousand exposures over several nights, using two cameras. Usually a few dozen exposures contain meteors, some bright and many other dim. This one is a rare gem – two bright, colourful meteors, streaking through the sky close to the Milky Way, both striking during the same 15-second exposure time, and both within view of the camera.
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Perseid Meteor Shower and Airglow
The Perseid Meteor Shower is formed when Earth travels through the debris from the comet Swift-Tuttle. The meteor shower can be seen annually from mid July to late August, and peaks around August 11 to 13 where 100 or more meteors can be seen per hour under ideal conditions. Dark skies are needed for the best view, as in Manitoulin Island, Ontario where this image was taken. This image captures the Perseids within a span of 3.5 hours. All Perseids appear to originate from a point, the radiant, in the Perseus constellation off to the right of the image. The airglow, formed as air molecules in the upper atmosphere were excited by solar radiation, was very faint to the eyes, but showed up as a green and red glow throughout the sky under long exposure.
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Snow Moon Blues
The February full moon illuminates the snowy field where a lone tree stands in solitude.
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Moonrise into the Autumn Sky
The supermoon rose against a vibrant pink / blue glow in the sky on this autumn day. The glow, also called the “belt of Venus” (even though it has nothing to do with Venus the planet), is an atmospheric phenomenon that can be seen close to sunset time looking east (as when this photo was taken), and close to sunrise time looking west. The belt of Venus is a demarcation of day and night – the pink on the top comes from atmosphere lit by the sun, while the blue in the bottom comes from atmosphere in the shadow of the Earth.
Capturing this image requires paying attention to the alignment of time and space. This shot was taken on a clear day when sunset and moonrise were only a few minutes apart, and when the rising moon lined up with the tree. There are often only one of two days a year when all the conditions are aligned.
