Sometimes though, trailing stars might be exactly what you want to capture.
Sometimes though, trailing stars might be exactly what you want to capture. Then the 500 rule can be a great guide to calculate the minimum exposure time you should use for the individual exposures that will make up your Star Trail image. I have a free guide on Star Trail photography available on my Youtube channel. You might also want to approach focal length a bit different when photographing Star Trails. While going as wide as possible might be the right approach when photographing the Milky Way, now you might want to zoom in a bit to get longer Star Trails – unless you want to capture the stars circling around Polaris.