Northern Gold Mining Inc. Sees a Revolutionary New Picture of its Drill Core Mineralization

TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwire - Dec. 7, 2011) - Northern Gold Mining Inc. (TSX VENTURE: NGM) ("Northern Gold" or "the Company") announced today that it has retained Photonic Knowledge to supply and operate its new Core MAPPER™ hyperspectral technology, to enhance the determination of mineral and metal content in drill core samples from Northern Gold's Garrison Gold Property, 90 km east of Timmins, ON.


Highlights:

- This hyperspectral imaging technology represents a significant advance in logging and processing drill core when assessing gold mineralization on the property.

- Output integrates with geological modeling, enabling 2D or 3D visualization.

- Northern Gold is currently utilizing Core Mapper™ one to two days per week to map and determine mineralogical content of 1500-2000 meters of core.

With core mapping completed on nearly 50,000 meters of drill core to date at the Garrison Gold Property, Northern Gold plans to continue using this revolutionary new technology developed by Photonic Knowledge. Near term, NORTHERN GOLD plans to use the Core MAPPER™ to analyze approximately 100,000 meters of drill core drilled by previous operators on the Property with the expectation that several hundred thousand meters of past, current and future core drilling, and possibly including reverse circulation drill cuttings, will be mapped using this technology.

In a joint announcement, Northern Gold's Vice President of Exploration, Mr. Michael P. Gross, and Photonic Knowledge's President and CEO, Mr. Eric Roberge said, "This new application of hyperspectral technology will bring added value to Northern Gold's drilling programs in terms of greater productivity and reduced costs when assessing gold mineralization on the property."

Core MAPPER's™ hyperspectral imaging is an application of a technology originally developed in the 1960's for remote sensing from aircraft and satellites that captures and analyzes information from across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Much as the human eye sees light in three bands (red, green and blue), spectral imaging divides the spectrum into many more bands and Core Mapper™ adapts this technology for use at the drill core scale with significantly higher resolution. The wavelength differences of absorbed and reflected light shone onto the core samples is analyzed in hundreds of very narrow bands down to a resolution of 2 nanometers, or 2 billionths of a meter of the visible and near infrared light spectrum. This technological application has a spatial precision of 1 square millimeter, much greater than a square meter as usually found in remote sensing. Processing of the information identifies characteristic patterns for minerals, rock types and alteration types that can be mapped and displayed graphically in a variety of ways, in two or three dimensions, to guide additional drilling, model the deposits, target assaying zones within the core and generally speed up interpretation of results and generally add value by providing new insights into this and other data collected in a mineral exploration program.

"The Core MAPPER™ created by Photonic Knowledge represents the most significant improvement to logging and processing drill core that I have seen in the last 40 years," stated Mr. Gross, a geologist and mine operator with over 40 career years' experience and a Master's degree in Economic Geology. He went on to say that, "This revolutionary new process is now an integral part of Northern's drilling and exploration work on our Garrison Property and I'm impressed with the level and quality of service provided by Photonic Knowledge."

Photonic Knowledge has made it possible to economically analyze drill core with unprecedented speed and precision. According to Eric Roberge, President and CEO of Photonic Knowledge, "The major advantage of this technology is its ability to provide a picture to geologists with a field of view that is 1,600x larger from the conventional handheld spectrometer and 900x more precise." He concluded by stating, "The Core MAPPER™ is capable of mapping and analyzing up to 2,000 meters of core per day and we look forward to working to this volume with Northern Gold Mining Inc."

Grant of Options: The Company further announces that, pursuant to its Incentive Share Option Plan, it has granted 285,000 stock options to various employees with a strike price of $0.245/share (closing price as of Northern Gold on the TSX-V as of November 29, 2011) vesting quarterly over the next two years.


About Photonic Knowledge:

Photonic Knowledge is a private company based in Rosèmere, Québec, servicing the mining and petroleum industries from early exploration through to production. With the patented innovation of the Core Mapper™, Photonic has made it possible to economically analyze drill core with unprecedented speed and precision. This is a new, patented update on the decades old and proven technology (originally developed at California Institute of Technology and used by NASA) that uses hyperspectral analysis to analyze mineralogy. PK's mission to its clients is to "Realize your core values!"


About Northern Gold Mining:

Northern Gold Mining Inc. is a TSX-V listed, publicly traded junior resource company based in Toronto, Ontario, dedicated to the discovery and development of high value mineral deposits in the proven mining camps of Kirkland Lake and Timmins in North Eastern Ontario. Northern Gold is focused on developing two advanced stage gold deposits on its 100% owned Garrison Gold Property. In addition to the advanced stage Jonpol and Garrcon Gold Deposits, both of which have NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimates presented in independent NI 43-101 Technical Reports posted to SEDAR (October 21, 2009, October 23, 2010 and August 8, 2011), the property hosts several other gold mineralized showings including the less advanced 903 gold mineralized area. A Preliminary Economic Assessment is included in the 43-101 Technical Report posted to SEDAR August 8, 2011. The Garrison Gold Property has historical mining infrastructure at both the Jonpol and Garrcon Deposits, and currently producing mines are located near the property.

The technical aspects of this press release have been reviewed by Michael Gross M.S., P. Geo., and Vice-President Exploration for Northern Gold, who is the "Qualified Person" as defined by NI 43-101 for this project.


CAUTIONARY STATEMENT:

This News Release includes certain "forward-looking statements." These statements are based on information currently available to the Company and the Company provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking statements include estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Forward-looking statements may be identified by such terms as "believes", "anticipates", "expects", "estimates", "may", "could", "would", "will", or "plan". Since forward-looking statements are based on assumptions and address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results relating to, among other things, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of the Company's mineral properties, and the Company's financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with the activities of the Company; and other matters discussed in this news release. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and readers should not place undue reliance on the Company's forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by the Company or on its behalf, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.



Contact Information

For further information on Northern Gold Mining Inc., please
contact: Martin R. Shefsky, President and CEO
416.366.7300
416.366.7301 (FAX)
mshefsky@northerngold.ca
www.northerngold.ca

For further information on Photonic Knowledge Inc., please
contact: Eric Roberge, President and CEO
450-965-9913 x200
450-621-8706 (FAX)
eroberge@photonicknowledge.com
www.photonicknowledge.com