Stars Are Out Tonight - Part 1

My very first star trail picture... should have read a couple of tutorials first, to get better results, but for just giving it a try, I think it turned out well...

So there's quite some noise due to the too high ISO, but the trails are also just "dots on a string" instead of continuous lines.
The thing is, I don't have a cable release to lock the shutter. So I had to take several 30 second pictures and combine them later.
After such a 30 second shot, my camera takes a while to process the data and be ready for the next shot, hence the broken lines.
Not that I mind all that much. I kinda find the result to be interesting.
Maybe I'll just have to invest into a cable release, though. That'd reduce the tedious postwork... My lazy side would really appreciate it.

Also, I had some trouble with passing cars, which lighted my scene when I wanted it dark. But the headlights of one car had quite the nice effect on the trees, so I left that picture in the composition. Looks better than the picture where I had used my flash on them.

This is a composition of 8 30 seconds pictures combined. Counting the time my camera needed to recover in between the shots, it was taken over 6 to 7 minutes. Then I noticed Ursa Major above the house at my back and thought that would be a much better subject. Besides, then I'd have my back to the passing cars, too.
So I stopped this and turned around for the next trail picture.