1. Astro photo 101.  

     At the right you see the Ring Nebula of the Lyrae, Messier object M57. Taken summer 2013 by a newbie  to astronomy; I only been in the "business" since  Dec 2011.  
     This "site" is to show what can be done with relatively  simple means, photos taken in the middle of a small town  with 3000 inhabitants, one block from Main Square.  Pictures possible as long as your not living in heavily  light polluted environments, like Stockholm, London,  New York, LA, Tokyo, Sidney, Beijing or any other larger  metro area.  The picture right is taken with a mid-range compact DSLR  camera, a Sony Nex-5R, and a $110, 900 mm/70 mm refractor telescope on a $250 Sky-Watcher Synscan AltAz GOTO computerized telescope mount, the principal solution for my first 1.5 year.    
     Some 50 pictures, 30 sec long exposures, combined to a  single picture with the help of a freeware astro photo  program, Deep Sky Stacker (DSS in the "business") and  GIMP photo editor. All 50 pictures added into a single  one. In the originals you hardly see the ring, just a  faint shadow.  Here you see some 25% of the original picture, cropped and enhanced to give contrast to the nebula, though I used a light weak f-12 telescope (f-value same as for camera lenses), not really allowing for enough light for this type of objects. But doing it this way did.  
     Astro photo is rewarding, you have a whole sky to watch;  365 nights per year; if not cloudy, midnight sun, moon shining or Northern/Southern Lights, that is. But if  missed something, we can revisit it and find new stuff  to view or photograph what we missed last time. Like  around Aug 19, 2013, when a nova, exploding star,  showed itself in the constellation of Delphinium. You also has the Moon, galaxies, star clusters, nebulae,  multiple stars and planets. Some of us hunts asteroids  passing stars, measuring light change of the stars.   
     There is a lot of views about astro photo; many saying  your need a couple of $1000 of equipment to do it.  But do you?  If you have any good compact camera, like a Sony Cybershot,  Canon Ixus or Panasonic Lumix TZxx, start with planetary "digicam:ing" on a good birdwatcher monocular or a sea  telescope on a stand.   
     If you lack a birdwatcher monocular or sea telescope,  have a minimal budget, then you can look for something  like Bresser.de's ~$220 Jupiter 700 mm/70 mm refractor,  Vixen's ~$140 Space Eye 70 starter scope, National  Geographic's ~$150 Heritage telescope or even  SkyWatcher's motorized Heritage-114p Virtuoso for  ~$250-300. The last one can even track the object your looking at  to some extent, even allow for a bit longer exposures.  And all these telescope tubes are possible to be re-used  in better mounts later on, giving more, even if you   evolve upwards.   
     It might pay out to add some ~$70 for two wide angle eye pieces, like a 25 mm and a 12 mm Plössl with at least 60 degree angle of view. Attach the camera on the telescope with a digicam fixture,  positioning the objective into the telescope eye piece.  Direct the telescope to your object and focus and zoom  as usual. But take care not to mount the camera to close  or to far from the eyepiece.   
     When the picture is clear, then take your first shots  of the Moon, Jupiter or Saturn. Remember, not having a drive on the telescope, you have  to take shots with no more than 1/4 - 1/2 sec exposure,  often near maximum exposure time for most of these cameras. But most moon/planet shots is good with 1/20-1/40 sec exposure.  If the camera has a film function, avi 640/480 px, you  can use that instead and process the film in Registax,  another astro freeware. But is has to be mp4 or avi mode. 
     A remote (such as IR/Android/iPhone control) is advisable,  but my first shots I took with the camera's 10 sec  self-timer and that camera, a Canon Cybershot, had an  "4 picture in a row" option, I used. The 10 sec timer  delay allow for any photographer induced vibrations to  die out. For with these low-end mounts such vibrations  is an unavoidable problem. I will in another article try  to describe how to reduce such tripod vibrations. Today's cameras often can take shots with minimal noise  at ISO 1600/3200, so if needed, we use that. But moon  usually is good to go at ISO 100/200.   
     Well, you'r now set to go. Take your first pictures, try  at least to do series of 20 pictures and process them  according to the "3. Planetary photography" article.   
     But what about stars and galaxies? Well, that's another story, "4. Astro Photo 104" to be  precise, described in that article. First some more about telescope tekkie stuff.