"Painted" this tree with a 3-million candlepower light. The ability of the camera to capture many more stars than were visible to the naked eye is neat (however, it took some contrast adjustment and sharpening in the sky area to make them pop a bit more than in the RAW image. You do shoot RAW, don't you, because this image would have been nearly impossible otherwise). Also, used post-processing to remove some house lights in the background. Done at something near 37 north latitude looking in roughly a WNW direction if you're an astronomy buff.
Next evolution of this image - much later at night - will be with star trails. This means a lot longer exposure than the 42 seconds for this image. I think I'll try about 20 minutes for starters and "paint" the tree for the last 45 seconds. That should get me something similar to this image but with more visible stars and with star trails. May have to go to a new location with less urban ambient light. I have one in mind at Shenandoah National Park. The glow at the lower left - not objectionable as I like how it silhouettes the distant trees - "Metropolitan" Haymarket, Virginia.
B&W version is at - http://www.pbase.com/ed_k/image/96504408
PS - the 1,000,000th page view occurred yesterday.
PPS - I rarely wax poetic about any of my images but I really like this one. Too bad the thumbnail is so blah and won't entice folks to take a look.