March 27th, 2015
Nick Graham Thanks, @kevin. Yeah, the moon is really bright; I should do a night when there's no moon.
Flo Judging from your ISO, you might have already tried this, but have you heard about Expose to the right (ETTR)? It's over-exposing your astropictures on purpose to get a better signal-to-noise-ratio, basically, and it might help with light pollution. Also, as @kevin said, moonless nights are best.
Nick Graham I know about ETTR (and ETTL). The histogram for this shot looks slightly overexposed (majority of it is shifted right, but not clipping), which is how I was able to bring out so much of the detail in the sky (underexposed it by 2).
EXIF data
Brand
SONY
Model
ILCE-6000
Aperture
ƒ/3.5
Focal length
16mm
Shutter speed
20/1s
ISO
1600
Kevin Drum Looks really good even with the light pollution. If the moon had been dark, you'd have probably captured twice as many stars, but it actually looks cool flaring out from behind that tree.