THUNDER BAY — The Northern Lights have passed the peak of their 11-year cycle, but they continue to put on an impressively vibrant display.
At Hawkeye Lake, just north of Thunder Bay, the latest photos posted by stargazer Al Stecky capture spectacular images of green, pink and purple ribbons of light.
"The aurora comes in all different shapes and size, and with different magnitudes of power," Stecky told Newswatch. "The one that we got the other day just happened to be a good one, and it went right over our heads."
He said he was basically shooting straight up.
"We call that shooting into the corona. And you get a blend of all the colours because all the colours come in a stack."
Conditions at Hawkeye Lake were excellent after 3 a.m. last Friday, when the clouds dissipated and the sky became clear.
"Outside of the city lights, the night sky has got a classification of one, two, three, four and five, with five being the brightest and one being the darkest. In my area, I'm a one verging onto two, so to the north of me I have nothing that interferes with the night sky. When it gets dark out here, it gets really, really dark," Stecky said.
He said he's pretty much a nightowl, but he checks sources online to learn when activity on the sun is most likely to make it worthwhile to check the sky for the Northern Lights.
"There are two satellites a couple of million miles away from Earth that give us about an hour or 1.5 hour heads-up. That's how we get to know when it's coming."
Stecky uses a DSLR camera that provides high image quality, but he said people can get good photos just with their cellphones.
"There are really good cameras in there. You need a tripod, You need to shoot either with a remote control or a delayed timer because you don't want to shake your camera when you're taking the picture...And just learn how to use your camera. You've got to remember that when you take a picture with your cellphone, it has a built-in algorithm that automatically 'juices up' your pictures."
