That's everything you need for the setup. I like to start shooting before the sky is completely black--you'll find that if even a few of your photos capture a deep-blue twilight sky, it will add a rich color to your completed photo. Now just start shooting, and leave the camera alone for several hours. How long is long enough? You can get a nice photo with 75 or 100 photos, but the longer you can shoot the sky, the longer the trails will be. Try for 300 photos.

Thankfully, taking the photos is the hard work; stacking them together is not much more complicated than the process for making a panorama in an application such as Windows Live Photo Gallery. You'll need a specialized star-trail stacking program; I recommend two, both of which are easy to use and free. is a good choice because it can not only stack your photos but also make an animation of the stars rotating in the sky. is a similar program, but it lacks the animation option.

To use Startrails, for example, simply download the program and copy the folder to a location on your PC (the program requires no other installation). Run Startrails by double-clicking the icon in the program folder.

Select File > Open, and choose all of the photos from your star shoot. Then, click Build > Startrails. A few minutes later (it might take a while on a slower PC, or if you have hundreds of photos), you'll end up with a completed photo that you can save to your PC.