Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve

Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve The Torrance Barrens is a Conservation Reserve consisting of 1990 hectares of crown land southeast of Bala. The red light helps to keep our night vision intact.

Hello Everyone,

Thank you for taking the time to visit this page about the Torrance Barrens. I volunteer to help clean, maintain and run this page as I love the Torrance Barrens. As I am a photographer and usually out in the forest it makes it hard for me to answer the many questions I get on here and my many other pages. I get asked the same questions a lot so here is a post I will try to keep a

t the top of the page linking many of the requested material. Thank you and I hope you all enjoy the time in the barrens. NOTE:
If it is after dark please keep your high beams off and try to keep all lights off or to a minimum. Please take out what you bring in and help keep the Torrance Barrens clean. CAMPING is first come, first serve and is free for residents of Canada. As this is a dark sky reserve try not to have fires unless needed and if you do have a fires please keep it to a minimum. RED LED lights are recommended for walking around during the night hours as there will be many people in the area viewing and photographing the night sky. WEATHER FORECAST (clear sky charts): http://cleardarksky.com/c/TrrcBrrnsDSPONkey.html?1

NORTHERN LIGHTS FORECAST (prediction): http://www.solarham.net/
Up to date forecast: http://www.softservenews.com/

Directions
To get to the Torrance Barrens go off District Road 13 (Southwood Road). If you are coming north on Highway 11, turn west onto District Road 13 (between Gravenhurst and Washago), then drive about 20 minutes until you see a Torrance Barrens sign on your right. It can be hard to miss if you are looking for this at night. You can also access the Torrance Barrens by taking Highway 169 from Gravenhurst or Bala to District Road 13 (Southwood Rd.) On google maps or online maps try looking for "Barrens extension" as it is in the Torrance Barrens and just a little north of the parking lot. If you zoom in on the maps you will see a lake called "Highland Pond" and it is right in front of the parking lot. Thank you again. Cheers

Wesley

07/01/2019

It is so sad to see the disrespect in the Torrance Barrens tonight. People are driving recklessly, parking all over in areas that is designated no parking, leaving lights on, littering everywhere and camping when camping is not allowed in the Torrance Barrens conservation area. Please respect the land! Something needs to be done to control this area and the disrespectfulness going on in this conservation area!!!! Muskoka411 News Ontario Provincial Police

There is a closure of Southwood Road so check for detours to access the Torrance Barrens.
04/26/2019

There is a closure of Southwood Road so check for detours to access the Torrance Barrens.

Southwood Road is fully closed to traffic on April 26 and a portion of April 27 as required for emergency track work at the CN Rail crossing, according to a news release from the Town of Gravenhurst. The road closure will impact Muskoka Road 13 (Southwood Road) at the CN Tracks all day Friday and

The moon from last night captured at the Torrance Barrens. Let’s hope for many more clear nights in the near future. 🤞🙌🌌...
04/16/2019

The moon from last night captured at the Torrance Barrens. Let’s hope for many more clear nights in the near future. 🤞🙌🌌😀

Waxing Gibbous Moon in Colour (87%)

Last night was a nice clear night so I headed up to the Torrance Barrens to capture some images. I started to setup and then realized I had forgotten to bring the counterweight for my AVX Mount so instead of taking deep space images with the hydrogen alpha filter, I decided to do my largest stacked moon shot to date. This image took about 1.5 hours to capture the over 1200 images. I loaded them into Lightroom, cropped, added saturation and vibrance before exporting as JPEG to stack in Registax. In Registax I stacked 900 images and used the wavelets tool to help bring out the details. After that I loaded the image into photoshop for some final adjustments.

Camera: Canon 7d mkii
Optics: Sigma 150-600mm
Mount: Celestron AVX
Exposure: 600mm @ f/8 - ISO 100 - 1/200 second x900
Processed with Registax - Lightroom - Photoshop

Website: www.cowboywithacamera.com/workshops/
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©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

This week Cowboy with a Camera will be celebrating International Dark Sky Week with 1 image every day from dark sky loca...
04/01/2019

This week Cowboy with a Camera will be celebrating International Dark Sky Week with 1 image every day from dark sky locations including the Torrance Barrens. This image was captured back in October, 2012 at the Highland Pond in the Barrens. 😀

International Dark Sky Week (Photo 1 of 7)

www.darksky.org/

Starting today and for the next 7 days I will take a look back at some of my personal favorite astro photos along with stories from the past while being under a dark sky.

Painting the Sky with Colour

The month was October in the year 2012. We gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner with friends and family all coming together to give thanks for all life has brought us. After dinner down the long dark road we see this light off in the distance. In amazement we start to notice this light dance as it gently floated across the sky. As we started driving past the field near my farm we started to notice these lights shimmering ever so beautifully. From this moment on my nights were never truly the same. The night now suddenly went for calm, relaxing and peaceful to panic, chaos, addiction and paranoia. The first thing was that I didn't have my camera so quickly panic mode kicked in, I must get home now, grab the camera, swap to a wide angle lens, make sure memory card is in the camera, grab the tripod and rush get back out. This is when the paranoia started to play a role as we headed back up the road not knowing if the dancing cloud was still going to be there, whether or not I could actually photograph it properly and how long will this last? Once we pulled over I quickly setup to start photographing what was to be the start of a serious addiction. We photographed here for a bit while enjoying lady aurora danced above and showing no signs of backing down. After a little while I decided to drive down to the Torrance Barrens Dark Sky Preserve to further watch this amazing phenomenon called Northern Lights. This was the start to the night sky addiction, chasing the darkness and enjoying the beauty of the night. This was the first good image of the aurora I had ever captured while sitting at the Highland Pond in the Torrance Barrens.

Website: www.cowboywithacamera.com/workshops/
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Instagram: www.instagram.com/cowboy_with_a_camera/

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

This image was captured last night in the Torrance Barrens. It is always a good time when you have clear/dark skies! Als...
03/27/2019

This image was captured last night in the Torrance Barrens. It is always a good time when you have clear/dark skies! Also if you are looking to learn astrophotography, Cowboy with a Camera will be hosting a workshop for advanced astrophotography in Algonquin Provincial Park.

The Rosette Nebula

I am happy to announce that the Mad Musher and Cowboy with a Camera have partnered up again this year to offer an advanced astrophotography workshop in Algonquin Provincial Park. There is a link below with more information. This will be the only workshop I will be hosting this year as I have several things in the works which I look forward to sharing with you all soon. During this workshops I will teach you how to capture images like this and so much more.

This is the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) which is a large region of H II located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the constellation of Monoceros. The nebula is a distance of approximately 5,000 light years from Earth. The size of this beautiful area is approximately 130 light years across. There is also a star cluster in the Rosette Nebula labeled NGC 2244 (Caldwell 50) and the neat thing is stars of the cluster were formed from the nebula’s matter. So many amazing things to photograph and learn about space which is what keeps me out shooting and always wanting to learn more.

Website: www.cowboywithacamera.com/workshops/
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Instagram: www.instagram.com/cowboy_with_a_camera/

Camera: Sony a7s modified full spectrum with an Owl/Optolong adapter with drop in Optolong UV/IR cut filter
Optics: Sigma 150-600mm (Canon Mount)
Mount: Celestron AVX
Guider: Orion StarShoot
Exposure: 600mm @ f/6.3 - ISO 1600 - 180 seconds x 50
+30 darks +50 flats +50 bias
Processed with PixInsight - Lightroom - Photoshop

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

03/27/2019

I have to say I am a little, actually no, I am very disappointed in some of the people who have been coming to the Torrance Barrens. Tonight while my camera was capturing images in the Barrens I decided to pick up other peoples trash and I filled an entire large garbage bag with trash left from visitors! 😢 Note there is still tons of snow here left to melt away which will reveal more garbage in the near future. What you pack in, you pack out! Leave no trace.
Please let’s try to keep the Barrens a beautiful place for everyone to enjoy.

03/22/2019

The weather forecast looks good for star gazing this weekend and they are predicting a G2 storm for Saturday so northern lights are very possible this weekend. 😀 May we all have clear, aurora filled skies. Happy gazing and happy shooting. 🌌🙌🌌

The crescent moon with some earthshine from tonight. 😀🌌🙌🌒
03/13/2019

The crescent moon with some earthshine from tonight. 😀🌌🙌🌒

Earthshine on Waxing Crescent Moon (30%)

This new year I said to myself I would go out every clear night to capture anything and everything while also trying new techniques in order to better my night photography. I have also been testing new software for my astro imaging while it’s cloudy. This lunar image here is another test in stacking tracked lunar sequence to bring out more detail while reducing noise. I took multiple exposures at 150 images each, stacked those individually and then blended the exposures to bring out the earthshine detail without overexposing the lit side. What do you think of these results?

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Camera: Canon 7d mkii
Optics: Sigma 150-600mm
Mount: Celestron AVX
Exposure: 600mm @ f/10 - ISO 100 - multi exposures x150 x3
Processed with Registax - Lightroom - Photoshop

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

A good chance for northern lights this coming week if the weather cooperates. 😀 here is to hoping we have clear skies! 🍻
03/11/2019

A good chance for northern lights this coming week if the weather cooperates. 😀 here is to hoping we have clear skies! 🍻

On Friday night we were blessed with beautiful clear and dark skies in and around the Torrance Barrens. Let hope many mo...
03/10/2019

On Friday night we were blessed with beautiful clear and dark skies in and around the Torrance Barrens. Let hope many more nights like this are to come this spring and summer.

Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33)

The Orion constellation has been a long time favorite of mine for many reasons. Visually with the unaided the constellation looks beautiful, as you look into binoculars or a visual scope the finer targets becomes more vivid and mesmerizing but for photography it is a treasure chest with so many targets to image. I have been wanting to capture a good image of this area for a while but I could never get the final result I had in my mind. Recently I started upgrading my setup to be very reliable, very portable as well as quick and easy to setup in remote locations. On Friday night it was the first time in a while were the sky was perfect just after sunset to capture some data on the Horsehead Nebula. I am happy to say this is the result I have been looking for! 😀🙌

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Website: www.cowboywithacamera.com

Camera: Sony a7s modified full spectrum with an Owl/Optolong adapter with drop in Optolong UV/IR cut filter
Optics: Sigma 150-600mm (Canon Mount)
Mount: Celestron AVX
Guider: Orion StarShoot
Exposure: 600mm @ f/6.3 - ISO 1600 - 180 seconds x 50
+30 darks +50 flats +50 bias
Processed with PixInsight - Lightroom - Photoshop

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

The milky way over Muskoka.
03/09/2019

The milky way over Muskoka.

Milky Way over my Backyard

Since the new year we have been pretty much cloud covered many of the nights but this last week we have been blessed with some clear skies. Last night was probably the best night so far this year with good temperatures, next to no haze, the moon set just after sunset and clear the entire night. This made for some amazing imaging so I decided to shoot with two cameras and two trackers, each doing something different. Just for sunrise I setup to capture the Milky Way rising over the tree line. I shot many tracked images of the sky before turning the tracker off and capturing the trees without any motion. I then proceeded the sky in PixInsight and blended the trees back in with Photoshop and final touch ups in Lightroom.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CowboyWithACamera/
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Website: www.cowboywithacamera.com

Camera: Canon 7d mk ii
Optics: Rokinon 35mm t1.5
Mount: Sky-watcher Star Adventurer
Exposure: f/3.5 - ISO 1600 - 60 seconds x 60
+30 darks +50 flats +50 bias
Processed with PixInsight - Lightroom - Photoshop

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

The Iris Nebula from last night. Captured in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.
03/08/2019

The Iris Nebula from last night. Captured in Muskoka, Ontario, Canada.

Iris nebula (NGC 7023/C4)

Happy International Woman’s Day. You are all amazing and don’t let anyone tell you different! This target is named this because this nebula resembles the shape of an iris flower. The Iris nebula (NGC 7023/C4) is a bright reflection nebula locates in the constellation Cepheus. It is a great target to photograph with NGC 7023 being the star cluster within the nebula. This target was very low on the horizon after midnight but I still managed to get some good data as it rose from between the barn and the trees in the backyard.

Camera: Sony a7s modified full spectrum with an Owl/Optolong adapter with drop in Optolong UV/IR cut filter
Optics: Sigma 150-600mm (Canon Mount)
Mount: Celestron AVX
Guider: Orion StarShoot
Exposure: 500mm @ f/6.3 - ISO 1600 - 180 seconds x 40
+40 darks +50 flats +50 bias
Processed with PixInsight - Lightroom - Photoshop

©2019 - Wesley Liikane - Cowboy with a Camera

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Muskoka Road 13/Southwood Rd
Torrance, ON
P0C1M0

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