Thanks guys ...I didn't expect these were too good, so it's very encouraging - especially considering the general excellence of the other photos that have been posted in this thread.
A few experiments with long exposure. There's extreme light pollution in my area, so it's the best i could achieve.
I finally started to use the LifeView feature of my camera. It's useful when trying to make sure a distant object is in focus, as you can observe a tiny crop in realtime while playing with the focus ring.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe
-Carl Sagan
Absurd but not nesseserily extrem: Question I ask myself though, did I overproduce or is the raw material just doomed even before the photo was taken? This is pretty much straight out from the camera, with rescale and some levels correction to it.