Startrail Photography
We will start with the Star Trail photos, all taken in Cobden Ontario as Ottawa, Arnprior and Renfrew were clouded over. We had gone out hoping for auras which didn’t materialize, but ended up with several star trail photos over a farmer’s field.
Big Dipper
In the rush (and totally unplanned) after work drive to Cobden, I had forgotten my Manfrotto Plate so that I could mount my camera to the tripod, oops. Fortunately, I was able to use the fence posts of one of the farms. As you can see below, the stars appear to circle slowly (these are easily 5-10 minute exposures) around the north star  Polaris.
In fact, the reference point that the stars are circling around isn’t quite Polaris, but very close. But this isn’t overly important unless you’re doing astrophotography as you actually need to point to that point, rather than Polaris. A polar scope helps a lot but there are other methods (the famous “drift” method which I have yet to learn – gasp!)
So no auras and the clouds started to roll in, time to pack it in and head back home.
