That's an ideal lens! If you stop the lens down to F/2.8 and focus in on the constellation of Orion (the whole thing will fit easily in frame at 35mm) then you can comfortably take 6-8 second exposures without a tracker. Use your ISO to control the brightness and you have a working astro rig!

I forgot the tracker! That's an extra expense but mine was around £250

Not at all! It can get expensive, but this image was taken on a budget, 9 year old camera (around £400), a tripod (mine was around £120) a wide angle lens (bought used for (£75) and a remote shutter trigger (about £10). If you already have a DSLR then you are halfway there!

Thank you!

Once you get on to using a tracking mount you can do longer exposures with bigger lenses and your aperture doesn't matter quite as critically.
For a resource, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Photographing the night sky" by the late, great Alyn Wallace.

Thanks Andrew!
For this image I was using a 24mm f/2.8 lens. For this kind of image you want something wide (14-50mm) and fast f/2.8 or lower. That will allow you to take in a large part of the sky and capture light quickly without star trails showing up.

Thank you, Steve! 😁

Thank you!

Those dark skies make so much difference!

Thanks so much!

Thank you 😊

Thank you!

Certainly - it's a canon EOS1300D
unmodified and about as budget as you can get! That little camera is really doing some heavy lifting now!

Thank you!

Thank you 😁

Yes that really surprised me too!

Thank you! It was an unusually clear night so it had to be done!