Thanks , that was the first I was proud enough of to print . I ' ve gotten much better over the past few years through practice . Its harder here in Texas I took that in NM because of the lower elevation and thus more water vapor and atmosphere in general . Both substantially lower the amount of light that reaches your lens . A wider lens allows you to keep the shutter open longer without star trails , but what really matters is aperture . I have a 1018 mm lens that is super wide but the aperture at 10 mm is only 4 . 5 so it doesn ' t collect as much light as the 1855 at 18 . Would like to get a better wide angle for these shots , but I want many lenses and will likely wait on that as they are all very very expensive .