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George Wade Photography Nova Scotia based Landscape Astrophotographer

Black Rock Lighthouse, located on the south shore of the Minas Channel just west of Canada Creek in Kings County, Nova S...
10/06/2026

Black Rock Lighthouse, located on the south shore of the Minas Channel just west of Canada Creek in Kings County, Nova Scotia. A light has marked this location since 1848, when the original station was built as a square wooden structure that served as both the light tower and the keeper’s dwelling. The light was displayed through a three-sided window projecting from the building’s pyramidal roof. The original station was replaced by the 34-foot fiberglass tower seen here in 1967.
I’ve photographed this lighthouse before, but I was pleased that my visit this year coincided with low tide, allowing me to get down on the beach and shoot upward at the tower. The lower vantage point also gave me enough room to use my 50mm lens, which is what makes the Milky Way appear so large in the frame.
The light in this tower is a flashing one, which made using the “black hat” method particularly straightforward. When this light switches off, there’s a very brief orange afterglow. I left my camera’s sensor exposed to this faint glow just a couple times over the 5-minute exposure I used for the foreground, and that was enough to give the light a subtle orange glow without affecting the surrounding sky.
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Sky: Nikon Z8 from , Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 S, 10 × 240s @ f/3.2, ISO 800
Sky H-Alpha: Nikon Z7II, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 S, 10 × 300s @ f/2.5, ISO 2500
Foreground: Nikon Z8, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 S, 1 × 300s @ f/4, ISO 1000 (black hat method)
Tracker: iOptron SkyGuider Pro, Benro USA Tortoise

We recently spent a few days at the beautiful White Point Beach Resort on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. I knew we were goin...
09/22/2026

We recently spent a few days at the beautiful White Point Beach Resort on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. I knew we were going to have a favourable moon cycle while we were there, but we were also lucky enough to get a few nights of exceptionally clear skies.
Every morning we walked the dogs down the beach, and at the very end, sitting atop a large ridge of stones that runs the entire length of the beach, are some hauntingly beautiful dead trees that I knew I wanted to incorporate into an image.
I chose this little one at the very end of the ridge, paired my Nikon Z8 from Nikon Canada Inc. with the Nikkor 20mm f1.8 lens and let it run through the night, capturing star trails looking east toward the ocean. The stone ridge and tree were illuminated by lights from the Boat House to the north across Doggetts Pond.
The final image is made up of roughly 900 25-second exposures captured between 10pm and 4:30am, along with a 5-minute exposure for the foreground.
Six and a half hours of stars, one little tree, and a very quiet night on the South Shore. Thanks for another fantastic stay White Point! 🌌

09/08/2026

When I visited the Louisbourg Lighthouse earlier this summer, I set up a third camera to capture a timelapse while I was working on my tracked image through the night.
This camera was pointed upward facing Polaris from the stone ruins of the original Louisbourg Lighthouse, located at the base of the current tower. Built in 1734, it was the first lighthouse in Canada and was destroyed during the British siege of Fortress Louisbourg in 1758.
This timelapse is made up of 805 individual 20-second exposures, giving just under 4.5 hours of total exposure time, captured between midnight and sunrise. The lights hitting the tower are from fishing boats out on the water, along with the occasional car coming and going.

The Balancing Rock, on the southern shore of Long Island in Nova Scotia, just outside the small community of Tiverton.Th...
08/25/2026

The Balancing Rock, on the southern shore of Long Island in Nova Scotia, just outside the small community of Tiverton.
This incredible basalt column stands about 30 feet tall and weighs approximately 20 tonnes. While the rock itself was formed more than 200 million years ago, geologists estimate that this pillar has stood in its precarious position for at least 10,000–20,000 years.
Reaching it involves a short ferry ride to Long Island, followed by a 2.5 km hike through the woods. The final 235-step staircase is the challenging part though, especially when you’re carrying tons of camera gear in and out!
This image is one that I’ve had in mind for quite a while. Two years ago, I made the trip down and hiked all my gear in only to have a thick fog roll in and surround me for the entire night. Last year, access to the woods was restricted because of the wildfires here in Nova Scotia. But this year, everything finally lined up and I’m extremely grateful!
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Sky RGB - Nikon Z8 from Nikon Canada Inc. , Nikkor 20mm f1.8 @ f3.2, 12 x 240s exposures ISO 640
Sky Ha - Nikon Z7 II Ha modified, Nikkor 20mm f1.8 @ f4, 5 x 300s exposures ISO 4000
Foreground - Nikon Z8, Nikkor 20mm f1.8 @ f3.2, single 240s exposure ISO 640
iOptron SkyGuider Pro

Messier 8, or “The Lagoon Nebula,” captured with the Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope from Tiny Scope. M8 is located approximatel...
08/11/2026

Messier 8, or “The Lagoon Nebula,” captured with the Dwarf 3 Smart Telescope from Tiny Scope. M8 is located approximately 4,100 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius and spans roughly 110–130 light-years across.
This image was captured across 4 nights and consists of over 600 stacked images using the built-in duo-band filter, and 207 images using the Astro Filter. I used 60-second exposures at a gain of 60, for a total integration time of approximately 13.5 hours.
I can’t stress enough how easy the Dwarf 3 is to operate, and how accessible it makes deep-sky astrophotography—even for people with little to no experience.
If you have any questions about the Dwarf 3 please let me know! You can also reach out to Tiny Scope directly—they’re really great to deal with.
Thanks again, Tiny Scope! 🙏🏼

Beneath the core of the Milky Way stands the Louisbourg Lighthouse, a beacon on one of Canada’s most historic headlands....
08/04/2026

Beneath the core of the Milky Way stands the Louisbourg Lighthouse, a beacon on one of Canada’s most historic headlands. This is the site of the first lighthouse in what is now Canada, designed by French engineer Étienne Verrier. Construction began in 1730, and its light was first lit in 1734, guiding ships into the harbour of Louisbourg and marking the beginning of lighthouse history in the country. This coastline is also part of Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq, whose enduring connection to these lands and waters long predates both the lighthouse and the arrival of the European settlers who built it. Nearly three centuries later, that same point of land continues to connect past and present—its light now shining beneath a sky that has watched over every chapter of its story.
The original stone tower was destroyed during the British siege of Fortress Louisbourg in 1758, with some stone ruins still visible at the foot of the current tower. In 1842, a second square wooden lighthouse was erected, and burned down in 1923. The current octagonal concrete tower you see here was completed in 1924.
The red areas in this image are hydrogen alpha gases, captured with a specially modified camera paired with a hydrogen alpha filter and then combined with the full colour RGB frames. A keen eye will notice I’m missing some Hα data here, particularly in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. I’m chalking this up to inexperience, as I spent too long shooting my RGB frames before that area of the sky slipped below the horizon. A valuable lesson learned!

EXIF:
Sky RGB - Nikon Z8 from Nikon Canada Inc., Nikkor 20mm f1.8, 12 x 240s exposures @ f3.5, ISO 640
Sky H-Alpha - Nikon Z7 II, astro-modified by Night Sky camera, Nikkor 20mm f1.8, Astronomik 12nm H-Alpha MaxFR Filter, 10 x 300s exposures @ f3.5, ISO 2000
Foreground - Nikon Z8, Nikkor 20mm f1.8, 2 x 300s exposures @ f3.5, ISO 640

07/21/2026

A few weeks ago I stayed in a secluded little cabin in South Canaan, Yarmouth County.
It ended up being a perfectly clear night, so before bed I set up a camera overlooking a field of ferns leading to a marsh and small river.
Normally I would never include such leafy trees in the foreground when shooting star trails, as any slight breeze can move them and they look terribly blurry once stacked. However, that night was completely still, and I was just lucky it stayed that way until sunrise.
If you look closely at the tree line in the beginning of the sequence you can see a bunch of green light trails from fireflies that were moving about the marsh.  
This looks like a pretty peaceful scene, until you’re aware of how many ticks are in those ferns! Our dogs found so, so many of them…

EXIF: 
Nikon D850, Nikkor 20mm f1.8 
517 frames, 30s ISO 1000 f1.8

The Memorial Church at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site is an unmistakable landmark within the Landscape of Grand Pr...
06/29/2026

The Memorial Church at the Grand-Pré National Historic Site is an unmistakable landmark within the Landscape of Grand Pré, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built in 1922, the church serves as a memorial to the Acadians who were deported during the Grand Dérangement beginning in 1755—a tragic chapter in Canadian history that forever shaped Acadian culture and identity.
I photographed this at 50mm, a focal length I’m not overly experienced with, but after this night I’ll definitely be reaching for it more often. One of my favourite details in this image is that the Lagoon Nebula is visible tucked between the steeple and one of the rear chimneys.
It was also great running into Michael J. Butt - Nightscape Photographer and Keith Ernest that evening! They both produce incredible work, so be sure to check out their pages and give them a follow.
Standing beneath the expanse of the Milky Way at this location, it’s hard not to reflect on the centuries of history this landscape holds—from the ingenuity of the Acadians who reclaimed these tidal marshes with d***s and aboiteaux to the sorrow and tragedy of the Deportation that followed.
EXIF:
Sky RGB - Nikon Z8, Nikkor 50mm f1.8, 90s @ ISO 640 f2
Sky H-Alpha - Nikon Z7 II, Astro-modified by Night Sky camera, Nikkor 50mm f1.8, 120s @ ISO 2000 f2
Foreground - Nikon Z8, Nikkor 50mm f1.8, 90s @ ISO 640 f2

The Cape George Lighthouse stands over 400 feet above St. George’s Bay on Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Shore. It is the ...
06/16/2026

The Cape George Lighthouse stands over 400 feet above St. George’s Bay on Nova Scotia’s Northumberland Shore. It is the third lighthouse to occupy this site, the first having been built in 1861. After that structure was destroyed by fire, it was replaced by a wooden tower in 1908. The concrete lighthouse seen here was constructed in 1968.
It’s located about 30 minutes north of Antigonish and roughly two and a half hours northeast of Halifax, the province’s capital.
This was my first trip to Cape George, and I was fortunate enough to be greeted by completely clear skies and great atmospheric conditions on the night of my visit. The beacon on this particular lighthouse is exceptionally bright, so I once again used the “black hat method” to control it and prevent it from blowing out the lantern room and surrounding sky. During the 5 minute foreground exposure I left the camera’s sensor exposed to the illuminated beacon for only a fraction of a second. The orange glow on the left side of the tower is from the waning crescent moon just peeking over the horizon as I finished my foreground shots for the night.

EXIF:
Sky: 15 x 240s exposures, ISO 600, Nikkor 35mm @ f2, Nikon Z8 from Nikon Canada Inc.
Sky H-Alpha: 10 x 300s exposures, ISO 2000, Nikkor 35mm @ f2, Astronomik 12nm H-Alpha MaxFR filter, Nikon Z7 II modified by Nightskycamera
Foreground: single 300s exposure, ISO 600, Nikkor 35mm براك المرجاح, Nikon Z8
iOptron Skyguider Pro
Benro Tortoise Tripod

Our galaxy’s core rising above the Pubnico Harbour Lighthouse, which marks the eastern entrance to Pubnico Harbour in Ya...
05/26/2026

Our galaxy’s core rising above the Pubnico Harbour Lighthouse, which marks the eastern entrance to Pubnico Harbour in Yarmouth County, Nova Scotia. The original Charlesville Lighthouse was built in 1854, but was replaced by the conical fiberglass tower you see here in 1967.
The lighthouse uses an occulting light — meaning it flashes on and off rather than rotates. Capturing operating lighthouses at night can be really challenging, as the light can easily blow out during long exposures. To manage that, I used what is often referred to as the “black hat method”: covering the lens with something dark while the beacon is illuminated, then uncovering it during the dark interval.
Since this particular light stays on for roughly one second and off for two, this process kept me really busy throughout the four-minute foreground exposure! I intentionally left the lens uncovered for one flash, just enough to show the lighthouse is on and operational but not enough to affect the night sky.

EXIF:
Nikon Z7 II astro-modified by 
Nikon Z8
Nikkor 20mm f1.8
Astronomik 12nm MaxFR Hydrogen Alpha Filter
iOptron Skyguider Pro 

Sky RGB - 10 x 180s, 20mm f3.2 ISO 800
Sky H-Alpha - 8 x 240s, 20mm f2 ISO 2500
Foreground - 1 x 240s, 20mm f5 ISO 1250

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