Star Trails

I have always been fascinated by the stars. In my high school photography class I made several attempts at trying to capture them but my camera's battery always died before the end of it. I know that you need to have your camera on the bulb setting and that you need to have very little light pollution for it to work properly. When I was first trying this I never invested in a remote shutter so I had to tape an asprin to hold down the shutter for a long period of time. When I was attempting this it was in the fall so the nights were getting rather cold so the battery of my mom's camera always died before I could get a decent shot of the star trails. Also I had to try this in my backyard which has a lot of light pollution, even with all the house lights off, from the surrounding houses and the town center a few miles away. Here are some tips I found to photography star trails.
James Vernacotola has an article about how he photographs star trails

• He suggests that to keep your lenses from fogging up in the cold that you invest in Gaffers tape to wrap around the lens.
•  He also says you will want to make sure the moon is in the New Moon phase that way the brightness of the moon does not interfere with the open shutter. 
• Get a battery grip that way you can have two batteries in at the same time, which will give you plenty of time to shoot the star trails. 
• You will want to look for a night that the sky is clear that way the clouds don't interfere with your picture.
• You'll need to figure out how long you want your shutter to be open, the longer the shutter is open the longer the star trails are. Here are a few examples of them to help figure it out. 
• Focus your camera and make sure the auto focus is off that way it doesn't try and focus on something while the shutter is open.
• Put something interesting in the shot besides the sky to appeal to people.
• This is what will happen if you have too much light pollution, the stars will be drowned out by it:

Here is a link to the rest of his article:
http://www.jamesvernacotola.com/Resources/How-To-Photograph-Star-Trails/12233655_V7cX4D