Water
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Tiffany Falls
Tiffany Falls near Hamilton, Ontario.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Windswept
“Windswept” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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Rugged
“Rugged” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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Standing Tall
“Standing Tall” captures the views around the Chikanishing River and Collins Inlet area. Our kayak gave us great vantage points from the water, unencumbered by land. This image started out as a regular photograph. Through creative digital edits, I worked on colours and texture, striving to bring out the feeling Killarney brings to me – tranquility, and an appreciation of the untamed beauty, sculpted by forces of nature.
“Rugged Killarney” series.
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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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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.
