Photos from upcoming article on Wood Buffalo national park

This September, I spent a week in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories and Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada’s latest dark sky preserve.

At 44,000 square km, “Wood Buff'” is now the undisputed largest dark sky park in the world.

wilderness_astronomy_wood_buffalo_aurora_salt_plains_horizontalIt’s so big in-fact, that you could fit all of Switzerland (or Saturn’s moon Mimas) inside its longest dimension.

Here now are some of the photos I took in-and-near the park while a magnificent set of auroras flared up over four gloriously clear nights.

This is one of the latest shoots on which I used an astro-modified Canon 60D, mounted on a Vixen Polarie tracker.

wilderness_astronomy_wood_buffalo_aurora_fire_towerThe whole tripod-mounted setup let me track the stars while still capturing the surrounding terrain, its people, and the quick-moving subtle details of the aurora.

Stay tuned for more in my “Wilderness Astronomer” column in a 2014 edition of SkyNews: The Canadian Magazine of Astronomy & Stargazing.

Meanwhile, check out the relaunched online presence of SkyNews. It’s at skynews.ca

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