In early May of 2018, I applied to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory`s first-ever Physics Photowalk Tour to be held in June. The physics photowalk is a worldwide event in which various facilities, such as CERN and Fermilab, open their doors to a selected of photographers, who are then allowed to explore around the facilities (under guidance for safety) and take photographs, presenting a new and creative few of the research environment to staff, scientists, and the public. I learned on May 18 that I was selected as one of the 20 photographers to visit the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, which has been in operation for nearly 30 years 6800 feet underground at the Creighton Mine site in Lively, Ontario (just outside of the main City of Sudbury). The original SNO experiment, which gave insight into the properties of neutrinos and the core of the Sun is complete, and resulted in the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Dr. Takaaki Kajita from the University of Tokyo and Dr. Arthur B. McDonald of Queen`s University in Kingston, Ontario. (An overview of SNO can be read here: “https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/).
Many other international collaborative experiments have been completed or are in progress at the facility and cover not only physics and astrophysics, but also biology. (E.g. FLAME – Fruit fLies in A MinE., which Dr. Thomas Merritt of Laurentian University is conducting to see the genetic and metabolic effects of the mining environment on the body, using fruit flies as the human analogue.) In addition to SNOLAB, the site is also an active nickel mine that operates down to over 8000 feet underground.
To give you an idea of the scale of the research facility, this is one chamber called the Cryopit, which is several stories high. This image is a composite of 30 20-mm focal-length photographs taken on a full-frame (35mm image sensor) DSLR. The images were merged in Adobe Lightroom on a cylindrical project. I left the edges uncropped, because I felt they added a dramatic touch to the scene. #PhysPics18
The Gaelic Nisei 