1st star trails, help appreciated!

Well I decided to go out in the back yard and give it a go. Kinda excited I got it, but then kinda disappointed with the results after seeing other photo's from people. So I think the orangish haze may be from when the back porch light was on at the start, and I turned it off after I opened the shutter. Other than that, I would greatly appreciate any tips you guys could provide. Was taken with my Canon Rebel XT, with the kit lens.

Iso - 400
Shutter - Bulb, ~10 minutes
f/stop - 10

I haven't done star trails myself, but I think you'll find better results by taking many 30 second exposures and stacking them rather than one long exposure, I think it would at least cut down the noise greatly.

Not a bad shot, at what focal length was that taken?

TheBigDog wrote in post #9738328
I haven't done star trails myself, but I think you'll find better results by taking many 30 second exposures and stacking them rather than one long exposure, I think it would at least cut down the noise greatly.

Not a bad shot, at what focal length was that taken?

I was right around the widest, prob around 18mm, if not 17.

Ill try the stacking thing next time, do you think I will get more of a black sky that way? Im satisfied with my first turn out, other than the sky not being black.

I usually use my my 18-55mm @ 18mm. and open up that f/stop to allow the light in, f/3.5 with that particular lens. ISO 1250 with my 50D.
Then take shorter exposures. 30 to 40 seconds is fine with just a few seconds between each shot. Then you can do it the hard way and use PS to stack them together making them into a single image with long star trails. or you can do it the easy way and use a nifty little program called Startrails

I normally use around f4 and combine a bunch of 3 to 10 minutes exp. Just experiment and have fun. Nice go at it, keep it up.