Thanks. I always have a hard time catching up to lingo.
Composition = ? (I infer its the point of view from where the picture is taken+whats in the picture?)
The motion blur was rather unintentional..the subway train sped past me as i was taking the pic 
The two sets of pics i posted was to show you why I was looking into a dslr... the night pics of the space shuttle launch...it captures the sky perfectly... the pics of the same launch that were taken with my lumix (which I have in my computer in the US >< ) show mostly dark sky with only one thin line of clouds. Both cameras are 6mp (nikkon d40 and my lumix) so the difference has to be the lenses no? or what would it be?
my lumix has a tendency to capture colors very brightly though.. as you can see on the temple pic the reds and blues are very bright.. some pics of mine where i had a sky blue shirt almost look as if i was photoshopped into the pic. I take all those pics on the famous 'P' mode 
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you check your PM saggs?
Sorry if I went over your head there. It is a good photo though, even if not intentional it worked! That's how you'll learn, trial and error.
OK back to basics. There are 3 major factors that go into creating a good photograph, Composition, Lighting and Exposure
Your right on composition, it is the most artistic part of photography, it is basically how you chose to show whatever the subject of the photo is. There are a lot of guidelines for good composition you can learn more about if you want. Things like the Rule of Thirds, framing, perspective, leading lines, S-curves, negative space. Your right that the viewpoint from where you take the picture is part of composition, so is what lens you use, telephoto or wide angle.
Lighting is simply what lights up the scene, sunlight, moonlight or artificial light like flashes and lightbulbs, or a combination of both. In landscape photography there is a whole lot of just sitting and waiting for the natural light to be right.
Exposure is your camera setting, or how you get the image have composed onto your film or sensor. With digital photography there are 3 components of exposure. Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO
Aperture, this is the part of the lens that controls how much light hits the sensor. The smaller the number the bigger the opening, for example f32 is basically a pinhole, while f1.4 is humongous. Aperture also controls the "depth of field" or how much of the scene in front of and behind the focus point is also in focus. The smaller the aperture the greater the depth of field.
The shutter is the part of the camera that controls how long the light hits the sensor. Shutter speed is usually measured in fractions of seconds like 1/60 or 1/500. The faster the shutter speed the less chance you have of any movement (from you or the subject) creating blurs in your image. (but sometimes blur is good, like your image above) So if you don't want blur you want the fastest shutter speed you can get with the lighting available, and the aperture you have set. Most blur will come from your hands shaking the camera, not the subject moving, which is why photographers use tripods in low light situations.
ISO or sensitivity is how sensitive the digital sensor is to light. You can crank up the ISO to 6400 and shoot hand held in very low light situations. The problem is that when you crank up the sensors sensitivity to light, it also becomes more sensitive to all the electronic currents running the camera. The higher the ISO setting the more electronic noise will be picked up, this noise translates to a kind of weird looking texture in your photos.
As for the difference in photos taken with a point and shoot and an SLR you mentioned. It could just be that the Lumix underexposed the photo. Or it could be lots of things I don't know. They are both 6mp, and assuming they both have decent lenses, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between them in prints up to 8x12. In larger prints the SLR would start to look better, because even though they are both 6mp the sensor in the SLR is gonna be about twice the size of that in a P&S. I won't try and explain it, but bigger sensors (even with the same # of pixel) equal better photos in large prints. Even sensors of the same size and resolution from different manufacturers look just a little different. Just like how Fuji 100 film looks different from Kodak 100 film.
I'll get back on you PM later Tac.
