As I have mentioned before, I upgraded my camera recently. My new camera has many of the same features as my old bridge camera did, pleasingly, so that helped me to get to grips with it more easily. However, there are also exciting new features for me to explore.

When browsing the camera's function menu one day, I discovered 'Night Mode'. That night, I was lucky to discover that the sky was superbly clear, so I put my camera into the new mode, fetched my tripod and went outside.

There is quite a bit of 'light pollution' around my home, but fortunately new street lights had been installed last year with the aim of reducing the upward glare. On this particular evening when I went outside I could see the stars quite well with the naked eye. I could even see constellations such as the Pleiades that had been more difficult to view in the past when the glare of the street lights was too much. The clearest constellation was Orion so I decided to practise 'Night Mode' by taking a photo of that.

'Night Mode' enabled a long exposure time to be set, and then I pressed the button and waited. Eventually I heard the 'click' of the camera finishing the exposure and I checked the results. I was amazed to discover that the camera had taken a photo that is recognisably Orion! Not the brightest of images, but I was very happy with that as a first attempt.

I did more menu browsing over the next few days, while indoors in the warmth, and made a plan for trying again on the next clear night to see if I could capture an even better stellar image. Sadly by the time I had finished setting up the tripod, etc, the clear night I had selected turned out to be rather cloudy, but I decided to go ahead with my plan anyway and see what happened.

I set up an extra-long exposure time, pointed my camera at the one visible light in the sky (probably the planet Venus) and pressed the button. After two whole minutes, the camera finally finished processing and I checked the image it had captured.

An impressive amount of colour was revealed during the long exposure time, so the sky in the picture was bluer than in real life. The light of the planet was clear, and a couple of other stars that I hadn't seen behind the clouds had appeared in the photo, too. The most fascinating part of the image, though, was the way the clouds had turned into a soft blur as they moved while the photo was being taken.

I had another go, and captured a few more stars while the clouds scudded past to create another fascinating photo, but then I went indoors to warm up – I got particularly chilly waiting for the camera to complete the extra-long exposure time. It has been somewhat cloudy each night since then, but next time there is a clear dark sky, I have a plan!

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