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Taking pictures of of stars and other deep space objects is a little different than shooting shots of the moon, or even the planets. Most deep space objects are dim, and getting enough exposure for them to show up good requires longer exposure times.
The simplest way to take a picture of deep space is to just put a camera on a tripod and with a cable release, hold the shutter open for an proper amount of time. For instance, this was shot was done with a tripod mounted 35mm Kodak Pony that came from the flea market for $5, done with ASA 400 film and exposed for 3 minutes:
This is a neat picture because it was aimed north, and you can see circular arcs caused from the rotation of the earth. You can also see what looks like a string of beads, that was an airplanes blinking lights as it flew by. Obviously if you don't want the stars to look like steaks you either have to shoot a quicker exposure, or you have to some how track the movement with the camera.
On a tripod, a camera with a 44mm lens can shoot about 12 seconds before trailing shows up and about 25 seconds before trailing gets really bad. This is a picture of Orion done with the same camera, but exposed for 25 seconds:
The stars didn't turn out as bright as I would have liked. A cheap way to make a camera track so you can get longer exposures without trails showing up is to build a barn door mount. I have not done this yet, but looking at a number of plans on the internet, they can be done cheaply and work rather well for wide field shots.
Another way to get more exposure is "stack shots" just like I stack shots of the planets. This is another picture of Orion, a stack of 30 2 second shoots with my digital camera on a tripod. There is the barest trace of The Orion Nebula in this picture:
Using a telescope allows more light to be gathered, so it will cut down on the amount of time you have to expose the shot. Again, tracking is needed for long exposures. This requires a motorized mount for your telescope.
I finally broke down and bought a new motor for my EQ2 mount. Not the dirt cheapest thing I ever bought, it was about $50. Even a cheap mount tracks well enough for a few minutes to mount a camera on it and take wide field shots. I switched to Fuji Superia 800 speed film and managed to get this picture of orion with a 2 minute exposure taken with my $5.00 fleamarket Kodak Pony. This length exposure on a moonless night showed several hundred stars and made the nebula (the red cloud in the sword area of orion) very visable:
Shooting thru a telescope at higher focal lengths requires better tracking. I have not yet been able to get 2 minute exposures at high focal lenghts, but I managed to take this shot of the Plaiedes with a 15 second exposure at an effective focal length on 733mm (the cheap Pony camera afocally coupled to an 18mm eye piece in my little cometron scope). There is some some distortion around the edges of the field from shooting thru a cheap wide angle eye piece, but the tracking was fine for the length of this exposure and brought out some of the blue nebulousity in around the larger stars in the Plaiedes area:
I have now updated my camera (July 2006). I bought a Yashica FX2 SLR at a yard sale for $10. It came with a fast (f/1.9) 50mm lens. With a lens this fast I am able to further reduce the exposure time. In addition, I also bought a lens adaptor ($12) so I can use M42 thread lenses with this camera, a T-ring ($11), and a eyepiece projection adaptor ($14.50 from surplus shed). (shown below with the eye piece projection adaptor atatched)
I have not used it with the eye piece projection yet, but I have taken a number of wide field shots thru the fast 50mm lens:
The Milky way (first shot was a 30 second exposure, second shot was a 20 second exposure of the Saggitarius region of the Milky way):
This was taken with the same equipment as the Milkyway shots, but was a 90 second exposure. Near the center of the frame is the Andromeda Galaxy:
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