Wow, thanks for that! Those comparison pictures have given me hope for my washed out looking photos
and I have been using DSS to stack shots, taking blacks and flats and such to reduce noise.
I have also been using Canon Utilities to control the camera directly via USB cable - WOW what a help that is! I dont even have a standard tripod yet, I just had the camera proped on the windowsill while I sat on the floor practicing different settings with the laptop. The preview on the laptop is remarkably similar to the final shot when you switch the settings - really impressed.
The moon was VERY bright last night, and was pretty much dominating every shot I tried to take with the 18mm. Unfortunately due to my location, my balcony can only see a limited amount of the sky - to the right is a horrible yellow street light, to the left is the city, directly upward are some power lines and then in my only usable spot of the sky was the bloody moon!
So anyway I decided to take a photo of that instead using the 250mm lens. Not bad for my first photo of the sky I think? It was ever so slightly out of focus, but I think that's actually caused it to look a bit more 3d in effect.
Let me know what you think
Edit: I took the photos at 100ISO with f/5 at 1/640