colonel00 - "Got a new lens to play with. After a little heartburn, I think it will be alright."
What lens did you end up getting? Image looks really good. I am thinking about a 24mm instead of my 14mm.
It's a Bower (Samyang/Rokinon) 24mm f1.4. It's alright but really struggles with sharpness wide open and is marginal at f2. I had to play around with it quite a bit to get some good results. I've got another copy coming so I can compare my results and see if the new copy is any better.
With a 24mm, you really only get 13s of exposure before you start to really get star trails. With good sharpness at f1.4, it would be a great lens but if you have to stop down to f2 or even f2.8 then it's really not that great. I have the ability to cheat though as my camera has Astrotracer which uses the image stabilization of the censor to actually move the censor to follow the motion of the stars. Very cool to be able to do 4-5 minute exposures. However, that will obviously distort and blur the landscape so you'd have to go in and stitch images together. I'll play more with that on my next trip out.
Also, the narrower field of view can be challenging for large things like the Milky Way and other astrophoto type scenarios.
I will never, ever, ever, ever get rid of my Rokinon 14mm f2.8 as it is outstanding and anyone with a DSLR should have one in their kit. It's one of the three lenses that I have with me at all times because it's not only great for night stuff but it's quite handy for landscapes as well.