The bright white star in the lower middle of this image is HD162826 located in Hercules. There’s a special story behind this star, which looks like just another random star in a sea of trillions with some faint galaxies deep in the noisy background. HD162826 is believed to be a sibling of our own sun born in the same stellar nursery and drifted apart through time.

This discovery was made in 2014 based on the composition, age, orbit and backwards tracking of the star. For now there are no known exoplanets around this sun but who knows what we might find in the future. HD162826 is now 110 light-years away from us.

This galaxy, NGC3718 is in my opinion one of the prettiest galaxies in Ursa Major.

I tried imaging this one last year under a near full moon but I wasn’t really satisfied with the result. Here is another 13 hours under new moon conditions. Much better!

This image makes me appreciate my 130 PDS telescope. I keep thinking about upgrading to something bigger and better but sometimes I wonder if I should just continue modding the scope a bit to fix the focuser issues and replace the metal tube with a carbon one.

I do have some new gear coming, a 135 mm Samyang lens for some widefield imaging. Hope to test it soon.