I often hear that for a good night photo you have to use a tripod. It is a handy tool for some cases, but not the most important thing for a night photo.
Photography is all about light. And light is a limited resource at night. The most important thing for Night Photography is the light transmission of your lens. Don't confuse maximum aperture and light transmission.
Aperture is the diameter of diaphragm divided by the Focal Length of the lens. Lenses before diaphragm determine how much light will be caught by the lens. Quantity of the glasses determine how much light will be wasted inside the lens. Each glass-air edge reflects some portion of light. See 👉 Internal Reflection.
Lens Speed is important. We can just decrease the Shutter Speed and increase the light collection time.
But look at these photos 👇
Tripod will help you in taking a sharp pic of the static objects. But slight movement of the main object will result in a smudged photo. To catch the moving object you need a camera with a High ISO sensor and Fast Lens.
You can fix High ISO Noize with time spent on post-processing. But you cannot fix a smudged object caused by the long exposure.
For night photography, I recommend a lens with 5-6 glasses and an aperture of f/2.0 or higher. There are some affordable f/1.8 or even f/1.3 lenses on the market.
PS: photos above were taken with Canon 7d cam and Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens (ISO 2000).