Be careful with curves and clipping pixels with histograms as in some tutorials. I tend not to use the histogram for clipping outlying pixels. DSLR data is highly modified anyway. Personally, I like to leave contrast adjustments until last thing.
Just by way of example, ignoring the colour palette used, this was taken with an unmodded DSLR of similar total time, give or take.
http://www.astrobin.com/full/41162/C/