Taking photos of the stars, and making a time lapse video? - 1

I'm a photography noob. I have a Nikon D40X and want to take some photos of stars, and then put them into a time lapse video. I've already done it but the photos and video suck. The lens is 18-55mm and the possible ISO settings are 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600 and H1/3200. The exposure time can go from 1/4000th of a second to 30 seconds, then goes to BLUR.

Basically I just set the camera up on a tripod and started taking photos with the remote. I didn't really know what settings I was messing with, except it was on "Auto (no flash)" which got rid of the "subject is too dark" message, and the photos seemed best when the ISO was on 800. When I hit the remote it took 25 seconds to shoot. Does this mean that it took 25 seconds to collect enough light? After it shot I waited ten seconds and pressed it again. I did this for 43 photos.

Here's the first photo I took of the 43.It's converted to JPG from NEF (Nikon's RAW format). The resolution is 3900 x 2613.

Then I put each photo in a small timelapse video. There's 100 milliseconds between each frame.

Not many stars because there's lots of light pollution here!

From using the camera today I now know how to set it to Manual, and set the aperture and exposure length. I want to take more photos of the stars tonight though, so are there any specific camera settings I should be using? Does anyone have any tips for a beginner? I get that less light means more exposure but there's still more to it.

By the way, with time lapses, when people get shooting stars in their time lapses, how quickly are they taking their photos?
Like in this one:

I think the main issue you have in your photo is the focus!

Just set the lens to manual focus, and focus to infinity.

If you are just doing photos, one way to get amazing shots from starts are called "startrails" this is when the earth rotates, and the stars move in radial motion. To take a startrail photo, you have to have many consecutive photos, used by the time-lapse technique, and stacked together later on with a software called "Startrails" (Imagine that! Haha) http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html

Here is an example of what I did for 65 photos, all 30 seconds long at ISO 6400:

And here is the time-lapse video of that same shoot: http://www.youtube.com/...L2a6ta-kPk

Then to answer your questions:
"Does this mean that it took 25 seconds to collect enough light?"
-Yup. The sky is so dark, that you need long exposures to capture an image that is not all black.

"so are there any specific camera settings I should be using?"
-Shoot in Manual Mode (M), f-stop = lowest (f/3.5), ISO = start at 800, shutter speed = 30 sec.
If the photo is coming out too dark/bright, adjust ISO accordingly.

"Does anyone have any tips for a beginner?"
-Yes!
1) Shoot with a tripod!
2) Fully charged battery (the more batteries, the better. Long exposures drain battery power, making them last just over an hour.)
3) When shooting, do not leave any time at all between shots, or you will get skips in the photo, like my first startrails attempt