Is this normal noise?

[JB80]

This has been bugging me for a while and I'm not sure if it's normal or not. When I take sky shots and night all the pics to my eyes at least seem riddled with noise.

For example the pic included is 3.2 seconds at ISO 200 and if you can zoom in you can see what I'm talking about possibly.

Is it the normal amount of noise?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong or have the wrong settings, I don't know.

I don't recall ever getting this much with my 20D and it frankly makes it feel like any widefield AP is pointless.

Or I'm going mad.

[Star Gazer]

On my iPad I can't see anything to be excited about. May be the picture you attached is not at high enough resolution but it doesn't look bad to me.

Before you decide that AP with your DSLR is pointless try taking 20 frames at say ISO 800 for 120 - 300 seconds of something that interests you. Then stack them in DSS and see what you think. You might just get hooked even without dark frames. True if you inspect the individual frames the noise will be quite appalling but with darks frames and some Photoshop you can get quite a buzz.

Just my thoughts