Canada's Parliament buildings host Northern Lights

The Northern Lights are making an appearance at Canada's Parliament buildings this northern summer, thanks to a new projection mapping show.

Seventeen Christie 3DLP projects are being used to deliver the half hour 'Northern Lights' show, with content provided by id3.

The show unfolds on the 472-foot long, six story high Parliament Building and 302-foot tall Peace Tower.

The show celebrates Canada's history, achievements and the majesty of its landscape and diversity of its people, with a 7.1 audio track with full narration, 44 moving lights and more than 100 LED lights.

Christies also delivered a similar show, Mosaika – Canada Through the Eyes of its People, in 2013.

Christies says the Northrn Lights offering will be twice as bright with twice the contrast of its predecessor, which used nine Christie projectors.

Jean-Marc Beauvalet, Department of Canadian Heritage manager of technical services, says the additional brightness, colour uniformity and superior edge blending of Christie projectors is a 'huge asset'.

"Everything came together for a seamless presentation and we have a very good history of working with the Christie products, this being the third show we have used Christie," Beauvalet says.

"The yellows and oranges against the blacks really come through much sharper because of the higher contrast we now have," he says.

Beauvalet says the brightness is much stronger than before, especially in certain areas on the Parliament building that were mapped with only one projector on the Mosaika show.

"For this show, we have three Christie projectors in the same area so we are tripling the brightness – it makes for a dramatic difference. You can see some of the most succinct images or the more distant visuals that are used, the capacity of the projector to reproduce the images and the colours that were chosen are big pluses.

Equipment is hidden behind shrubs planted in front of the Vaux Wall at the base of the building, but can't touch the wall or be dub into the ground as the Parliament building is 'almost sacred ground'.

"The magic comes from not seeing the sources of light or sound and people discover this hidden gem that is seen only at night when it is turned on," Beauvalet says.

Northern Lights runs from July 09 to September 10.