Camera Malfunction? or Dust on the Sensor?

[Cascading Delusions]

Hi my name is Nick and I'm having an issue with my Canon EOS 40D. Tonight I went out to take some pictures of lightning and was using bulb exposures between 15-20 seconds. I did some quick checking in between shots and they looked alright, but when I arrived home I noticed that nearly all, if not all, the images had specks of color on them. My lens is a Canon 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Standard. My ISO was set to 800. I have seen what dust on the sensor looks like in images and it does not look the same. When I realized the issue I took some extra shots in a dark stairwell to ensure there was no reflection of light sources and the dots were there.Any help or suggestions would be much appreciated. Here's a link to the my Flickr. Flickr: Cascading Delusions' Photostream the first two in my photo stream are clear examples of the problem.

[sybren]

It's difficult to see without having access to the original file (Flickr only gives us access to the "large" size), but my guess is that they're stuck/hot pixels. You had an 8-second exposure, and then it's quite common to see stuck/hot pixels. It's not dust on the sensor, it's a form of sensor noise.

There are two ways to deal with them: use shorter shutter times, take multiple frames, and stack them together, or remove the pixels in post processing.

[Cascading Delusions]

Your right that's exactly what it is. Thank you for responding. I'm relatively new to photography and have never heard of this phenomenon before and was concerned that there may be something wrong with my camera. Thanks again!