I know you're all dead set keen on your DSLR's and I well appreciate why, but I happen to have a curious little compact camera - a Panasonic LX3 - which runs to a 60 second exposure and has an f/2 Leica lens, and while I know well its no match for a "proper" camera I was curious to see whether it can actually capture much.
Anyway the weather gods finally obliged tonight and I took a few wide shots with this little beastie. They don't seem much until you download them as when downsized most of the stars vanish, however it did a lot better than I expected considering these are single 60 second shots - no darks, no stacking. All I did was shoot at ISO 400 (they looked noisy in camera) and drop the exposure a stop afterwards using SilkyPix which removed a lot of the noise. Tolerably.
As you have proved, there is no reason at all why you can't use a compact for Astrophotography.
They do a fantastic job for what they are.
I used to use my little Canon s3is for AP before I bought the 20d.
Great for widefields and using afocal for moonage. Jupiter and Saturn I used the movie function to capture .avi's and processed them in Registax.
I used a hack that allowed me to do 59sec exposures and in camera dark frame subtraction.
You might be able to do the same.
Nothing wrong with the LX3, my wife and I spent a little time listening to Ken Duncan at a show in Sydney on the weekend wax lyrical about the quality of the pics produced so simply with this camera. A bit of sponsored advertising, sure, but still decent praise.
I have had a lot of troubles getting our little point n shoot to focus at the low light found in astro pics, but I'm sure others here can help you out with that more than me.