Question about exposure and the moon

[Peach]

I have a rather odd question - that may seem completely obvious to someone else but for some reason I am baffled.

As you know, last night was a full moon and tonight the moon is almost full. It cleared up some tonight and I decided to pull out my not-so-impressing zoom lens just to fiddle.

I shot this picture:



That's nice - it's a picture of the moon - yay! b/c that's never been done before! *rolls eyes*

Anyway, while I was fiddling in CS5 I went:
Image ---> Adjustments ----> Exposure

to fiddle some more. My hand slipped (sort of) on the "Exposure" slider and all the way up to +20.00

This is what came out:



Can someone tell me what the heck all those dots are? I mean, I have an idea what they COULD be but I think it's HIGHLY unlikely. I get that the dots around the "moon" are where the light was and all that.. but what's the rest of them?

[Mike367]

Noise. 10car.

[Peach]

I should note that on the other 5 pictures I took, there aren't as many dots. Maybe.. 10-15.

And yes, noise is what I think it is too.. the more I look at it.