Blue
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Daybreak by the Lake
Morning fog, Lake of Two Rivers.
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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.
