Lighthouse
-
Early Bird
The lighthouse at Port Dover, Ontario basked in the warm morning sun, as a seagull flew by.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Great Lakes Sunset
Vibrant sunset by the Southampton Lighthouse.
-
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.
-
Setting Off at Dawn
“Killarney Lighthouse” series.
-
Golden Hour
“Killarney Lighthouse” series.
-
Evening Pastel
“Killarney Lighthouse” series.
-
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.
