Hi Josh, ditto what Phil said there.
The 4300 or any in the Coolpix range are less than ideal for deep sky work - DSLR's at prime focus or cooled astro dedicated CCD's are the best at that job. The DSI's webcammy things are popular too i see. But some CP's (or just about any P&S fixed lens digicams) arent bad for afocal planetary work (especially full disc moon/sun in a single shot (non-mosiac)- something that webcams cant do) and widefield normal nightsky stuff, as you have probably found. My two CP's are VERY noisy in long exposures.
The only CP's I saw half decent DSO stuff from was the ones with raw mode, including CP 4500's with the russian RAW mode hack - but even they werent super wild, very much on par with the DSI stuff in final outcome appearance.
heres a lady who uses a nikon cp 4300 for afocal work and wide field - (some of these pics in this gallery are from a film camera)
http://www.spacew.com/gallery/image004956.html
Kearn