Blue
-
Blue in the City
“Urban Colour” series.
-
Helix Nebula
The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula. It sits about 700 lightyears from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius, and spans about 3 lightyears across. As viewed from Earth, it is about half a full moon across.
Planetary nebulae, despite the name, have nothing to do with planets. They are formed at the end of life of a low to medium mass star, when all its fuel for nuclear fusion has been exhausted. The material in the outer layer of the star is ejected into space, while the core collapses into a white dwarf. The white dwarf continues to emit intense radiation, ionizing the ejected material and causing it to glow – hydrogen glows in red, while oxygen glows in blue-green.
Captured with my Skywatcher Quattro 8” telescope and QHY268M camera, with a total exposure time of 4 hours. Processed in HOO palette with RGB stars.
-
Starlight Textures (the Pleiades)
The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, is probably the best-known star clusters. At only 400 lightyears away, its six brightest stars are easily visible to the naked eye as a tight, dipper-shaped cluster.
The Pleiades are traveling through an area in space rich in interstellar dust. In astrophotography, the Pleiades are surrounded by blue nebulosity with intricate texture. The blue colour is due to dust preferentially reflecting the blue light from the stars, the same physics that make the sky blue on Earth.
This image was captured in RGB with a total exposure time of 7.5 hours, using a Canon 300mm f/4 L telephoto lens on a star tracker.
-
Ocean Dynamics
I spent half a morning photographing the surf from the Pacific Ocean. Every image was different and there wasn’t a dull moment. I loved all the action, how the stiff breeze sheared off the top of the breaking waves, and how the water turned into streaks of blue.
A black-and-white version of this image was selected to represent Canada in the 2024 Four Nations Competition, in which Team Canada won first place.
-
Ocean Spirit
I spent half a morning photographing the surf from the Pacific Ocean. Every image was different and there wasn’t a dull moment. I loved all the action, how the stiff breeze sheared off the top of the breaking waves, and how the water turned into streaks of blue.
-
Autumn Glory
Fall colours revealed themselves as the morning fog lifted around Rabbit Blanket Lake in Lake Superior Provincial Park, Ontario.
-
Thin Ice Mosaic
A thin sheet of ice formed over the lake the night before as the temperature dipped to -12 degrees Celsius. As it warmed up the next day, the ice broke up into thousands of pieces, bobbing gently in the waves and grinding past each other as they were carried by the current. The blue hue from the late afternoon overcast sky makes the scene extra icy.
I used a long telephoto lens to isolate areas of interest. The possibilities were endless, with every piece of ice having a unique shape, and reflecting light a little differently. Out of the series I like this one the most, with the brighter pieces of ice forming subtle diagonal patterns.
-
The Galaxy We Call Home
The summer Milky Way reveals itself during the evening blue hour.
-
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.
-
Snow Moon Blues
The February full moon illuminates the snowy field where a lone tree stands in solitude.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
