Starry Night in Algonquin

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My last blog entry looked at the sunrise and fall colours of Algonquin Park.  As I mentioned in that entry, Ron and I met our friend Glenn Springer for a trip into the park.

Not only did we shoot the sunrise and fall colours, but we spent the night before shooting the stars.  We left Glenn's place in Minden around 12:30 and made it to the park around 2:00 in the morning.  The weather conditions were perfect.  Mild temperatures, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky.

We were searching around the park for a location that had a northern exposure, with something interesting in the foreground.  We decided on the Lake of Two Rivers.  There was a beach on the south side of the lake, so the reflections off the lake and the tree line provided the foreground interest we were looking for.

Here is one of the first shots out of the camera.

I loved the reflection of the Big Dipper in the lake.

Since we were shooting in a northerly direction, we could not understand why there was so much light above the tree line.  That's Algonquin Park to the north. Then it hit us. It was the Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights.  How cool was that?  Then we noticed something else, directly overhead....

The Milky Way was directly overhead!  Very cool, indeed.  We don't see stars like that in the city.  Between the Northern Lights, the Milky Way, and the dozens of shooting stars, we were like kids in a candy store.

Here is another image of the Northern Lights with the lake and canoes in the foreground.

We set out photographing the stars to attempt an image of star trails.  Essentially, we shot 140 images of the stars in rapid succession, then combined them into a single image, so that the stars appear to circle Polaris, the North Star.  Here is my first attempt.

Each image was taken at a 30 second exposure, f2.8 with ISO 1,600. The 140 images were shot in RAW format, then imported into Lightroom.  After a few minor adjustments, and copying those adjustments to all 140 images, each image was rendered as a high quality jpeg.  StarStaX was used to combine the images into the final image.  StarStaX is a free download for a PC, or an experimental version for the Mac.  The Mac version worked flawlessly.

Pulling an all-nighter was the most fun I've had in a long time!

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Thanks for reading...

Mark