There are some guys here that are very knowledgeable on AP (astrophotography). < edit > Eric beat me to the punch. He and Pazuzu are probably the two most knowledgeable experts. There's another guy too, that I think has some history in NJ, maybe it's Flatbutt. I'm sure he's in the hobby thread that Eric posted.
Taking photos of stars and getting them to turn out beautifully, like the stuff that Eric does requires less than cheap gear. There are some new bits that, I believe, have reduced the cost of entrance over what it was in the past.
It also takes a TON of time (hours) for each photograph.
Another good place to begin is the astronomy version of pelican parts, the forums at "cloudynights"
https://www.cloudynights.com/index
They have a section specific to astrophotography including a beginner's section.
I think the cost of entry if you want to really get into it, is going to be ~$1k minimum. I know that in the past there were folks that had some websites for AP on a budget that I think got you down to the $500-600 mark, but those were probably 15-20 years ago.
You can start shooting wide angle, milky way, and moon shots with a DSLR and not much else.
You could get into planetary with a decent scope and a webcam.
But to take shots of nebulas, clusters, galaxies, etc..., that's likely to set you back a bit in $, time, and learning curve.
Oh, I forgot to mention the software side. I believe there are still some great, free stacking programs out there (when using a DLSR, you take a bunch of photos that are usually minutes long, and then "stack" them into one image that is virtually hours long). And you'll need image editing software like Photoshop to edit the details of the images to get the most from your images. I'm not sure what there is available on that side of things these days.