How to take good photographs of the stars (I'm a beginner)?

I have a Nikon D3100, and just the kit lens (18-55mm, and I think the lowest f is 5.6).
I really want to try taking photos of the stars, and I'm going to try tonight, but I was just wondering if anyone had some helpful tips for me?

The beauty of digital cameras is that you can keep trying different settings, then compare them later on the computer by checking the EXIF info and learning from it.

Travel away from city lights.
Use a tripod.
Use an external shutter release or a timer (to avoid camera shake).
Try out different settings until you're happy (but keep your ISO low).

Without an astronomy "tracking" mount for your camera, you're basically going to be limited to either star trails shots, or very short-exposure, wide-angle shots. For anything other than that, the stars appear to move too quickly (it's actually YOU on the rotating earth that's moving… ) for you to do exposures of constellations or close-ups of nebulae or galaxies.

Here's an article I wrote on the subject for Popular Photography a few years ago -- it should help:

http://www.popphoto.com/how-to/2008/12/how-to-astrophotography-101

Check out Jerry Lodriguss' website http://www.astropix.com

He's an amazing astrophotographer, and he's got some great information on his site.