Milky-Way
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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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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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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.
