It looks like the guys over at Nikon Hacker have figured out how to remove the feature on the D7000 that sometimes makes stars disappear when photographing them. This happens because of Nikon's noise reduction & hot pixel filtering and has been dubbed the star eater feature.
Check out the details here:
Nikon Hacker • View topic - Nikon Patch v1.16.1 BETA
Check out the details here:
Nikon Hacker • View topic - Nikon Patch v1.16.1 BETA