Greetings from an armchair photographer

[sexysi]

Welcome from North Kent, I'm new here as well 

Si

[badger111]

Greetings from Maldon, Essex

[Tim99]

Hello Skylark,

Good advice from Carastro (above) for camera settings to get started.  Also for focusing, you can use your live view and double the screen magnification to focus on a bright star.

Get that manual out and spend an afternoon playing with all the settings on the camera.  If you go out in the daytime and do some shooting in Manual Mode, this will get you started on how to do it.  Then, at night, I start out with a high ISO setting just to be able to see something on the live view. Then take it down to ISO 1600 or 800 and try some 15-30 second exposures to see what you get.  Of course, you will need a tripod.  A shutter release is the thing to have to minimize camera vibration but you can also set your timer on the camera to fire the exposure if you don't have a cable.  They are cheap though, so you will want to buy one.

[Saracen Bill]

hi Skylark, a very warm welcome from Bill in Cornwall 

[Guest]

Welcome Skylark to sgl