Astro
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Neowise at Sundown
Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise behind the iconic Southampton Lighthouse on July 20, 2020. Comet Neowise was the brightest comet visible in the northern hemisphere since Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. It can be seen with the unaided eyes in July 2020.
Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet nears the sun, the ice sublimes (turns into water vapour) from the heat of the sun, and the dust is pushed away from the comet nucleus by the solar wind, creating the dust tail.
This image was one of the 80 photographs selected to represent Canada in the 2022 Four Nations Photo Competition.
-
Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS in Southampton
Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was the brightest comet visible in the northern hemisphere since 1997. With its original from the Oort Cloud in the outer reach of the solar system, the comet was first spotted in January 2024 by the Tsuchinshan (Purple Mountain) Observatory in China, and then independently discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in February, which also confirmed it to be a comet.
This image was captured at the Southampton Lighthouse by the shores of Lake Huron, under an almost full moon. 65 frames were stacked for a total exposure time of 6.5 minutes in creating this image.
-
Midnight Starscape and Comet Neowise
A starry midnight scene by Lake Huron, where two prominent features in the night sky made a natural alignment with the Southampton Lighthouse. The first object is the Big Dipper, the seven brightest stars in the image, is part of the constellation of Ursa Major (the Big Bear) and is one of the most well-known asterism in the northern sky. The second object is Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise, which was visible with the unaided eye in July 2020. Comets are “dirty ice balls” made up of ice, dust, and various organic compounds. As a comet approaches the sun, the ice sublimes (turns into water vapour) from the heat of the sun, and the dust is pushed away from the comet nucleus by the solar wind, creating the characteristic dust tail of the comet.
-
Killarney Star Rise
“Killarney Star Rise” captures the experience of watching stars rising behind the picturesque Killarney Lighthouse, as evening twilight turns into darkness. A total of 135 separate exposures were used to compress this 80-minute experience into a single image. All individual exposures were taken with the same camera position and focal length to reflect the true trajectory of the rising stars in relation to the landscape.
What else do you see in this image? There are stars of different colours. The mass of each star, and the phase of stellar evolution it is at, determines the surface temperature of the star, and hence its colour (red is cool, blue is hot). Diphda, the brightest star on the right of the image, changes from dim red to bright yellow as it rises from the horizon. How does that happen? This is the exact same phenomenon we observe during sunrise – near the horizon, starlight and sunlight have to travel through a lot more atmosphere to reach us. The atmosphere dims the light and scatters the blue end of the spectrum, leaving predominantly red light through. And why do the stars rise at about 46 degrees off the vertical? That’s due to the latitude of Killarney at 46 degrees north. If we are at the equator looking east, stars will rise straight up from the horizon.
-
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.
-
Geminid Meteor Shower
Geminid meteor shower peaks every year around December 13 or 14. While the winter nights are chilly, those who brave the cold will be rewarded with a spectacular show. The Geminids are often bright, and surely plentiful. Under ideal conditions, one can expect to see upward of 120 meteors an hour. The radiant of the Geminids, the point where all the meteors appear to come from, is the constellation of Gemini (the Twins).
To create this composite image, the camera was placed on a star tracker and set to capture 4-second exposures continuously from 4 am to 6:30 am. The 11 meteors were in their correct positions relative to the stars, which were in turn in the correct positions relative to the landscape at 6:30 am.
-
Northern Lights, Southampton
Northern lights shining over the Southampton Lighthouse in the evening of September 2, 2023, during a moderate (Kp 6) geomagnetic storm. The just-risen full moon illuminated the lighthouse, and turned the sky deep blue. The Kp index, which has a value from 0 to 9, is a measurement of geomagnetic activity. A Kp value of 5, indicating a minor geomagnetic storm, can bring on northern lights activity in southern Ontario.
-
October Storm (in the Magnetosphere)
A Kp 8 severe geomagnetic storm hit Earth through the night of October 10-11, 2024, sparking widespread northern through all of Canada, US and as far south as Puerto Rico and Mexico. Together with the Kp 9 storm on May 10-11, these were the strongest geomagnetic disturbances recorded in the past 20 years.
This image was taken in Southampton, Ontario around 10 pm, when the northern lights surged in strength and blanketed the entire sky. The most common colours of aurora are green (from oxygen at low altitude) and red (from oxygen at high altitude). The orange aurora seen in this image came from the mixing of red and green.
-
Peaceful Moonrise
“Killarney Lighthouse” series.
-
Southampton at Night
“Southampton at Night” – Star Trails photographed at the iconic Southampton Lighthouse.
This image can also be titled “Watching the World Goes Around”. Due to the Earth’s rotation, at night looking north, all stars revolve around the celestial north pole, the point in the sky that the Earth’s rotational axis goes through. Polaris, or the North Star, is the star closest to this point. The celestial north pole is just off the top edge of this image..
This image combined 11 exposures of 15 minutes each for a total exposure time of 2 hours 45 minutes. The last exposure extended into the morning twilight, providing the blue colour in the sky.
