A few weeks ago I had an early holiday this year and went to Australia. I was about an hour north of Perth in a place called Yanchepp. The light pollution is such that the Milky Way is as clear as a full moon is. I have never seen so many stars in my life. Here in Europe, the night sky has a permanent orange hue to it Here are a couple of shots. Unfortunately, I blew the chance big time. My perfect little f2.4 24mm lens was residing 12,000 miles away when I opened up my camera box to get set up. So all I had was a 55mm that went down to f5.6. Due to this the only setting that would get a shot without star trails was an ISO of 1600  Still considering, you get the idea. At least I will know for next time
All the pictures are "as is". They are not double exposures or photoshopped, but one shot, 30 second exposures. The pictures with me are still 30 seconds, but after about 15 seconds, the person in the picture is "washed" with about three seconds of low powered light, same for the roads and the tree pictures. In this case the flash on my mobile phone is also a torch with three settings. We used the middle setting.

Matt

PS excuse the high gloss white legs......The natural colour of an Englishman 

Wonderful shots Matt....thanks for taking us along....