Shooting at the night sky

There sure are a lot of stars up in the Colorado skies,
at least a lot more than I can see elsewhere.

Being at 9,700 feet and 50 miles form a city of 20+K folks must surely help.

But I advice you, to get out when it is dark and there is no moon,

'cause if you wait for the moon to come out and shine,
you'll get a pretty blue, but a lot less individual stars.

So take advantage of that magic time between when the sun has completely set and the moon starts to rise.
And take note of the following fact: around this time of year, the moon will rise about one hour later each day.
So, if you noticed when the moon appeared tonight, you'll have an extra hour tomorrow before it comes out and its light hides some stars. 

So...... Get your tripod ready, pull your long lens out, (200-300 mm), set it to manual cause there's not enough light to either auto focus or to auto shoot. 

Open up your F-stop diaphragm to its greatest width (4 or 5 are my widest ones), and set the ISO film speed to as high as you can (6400 is as high as mine will go). Yes you'll get some mottle or noise, but that's OK for this.

Then try to focus as best you can. If your lens has distance measurements, use "infinity" or just below that.
But if yours is a kit lens like mine, it might have no numbers to help you focus.
Just take a few shots and magnify what you see, to get it as sharp as you possibly can.

Then test a few long exposures, depending on how bright the sky might be. 

I thought that 30 seconds would be great for me.

but,  do you see how the stars are little dashes and not round dots?
That's 'cause the earth is moving and 30 seconds is just too long to get them sharp.

So down to 10 seconds I brought it then.

Lots better I would say. But maybe 8 sec would have been even better.

So now its time to shoot a few groups of stars, then go inside the house and check the Internet to see what "dipper-like" constellation live in the south-eastern skies.

But, as I came back from doing that, I saw a plane come into view and shot before it got away.

Yes, its pretty crappy. I did not do what I said I'd do: 
focus any time you move your camera.
That is because it is real easy to accidentally move the manual focus while you move the camera or zoom in and out for a different field of view.
And in my excitement I probaly moved the camera or tripod.

Well, at 17 degrees, I was not going to stay outside and wait for another airplane.
I had enough, so I came inside for a hot cup of tea.