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The D5100 is pretty damned good, but there's a number of issues with using it for astro work. First off, if you want to shoot nebulas, like any other dSLR it's got a pretty good near-IR cut filter that significantly increases exposure times.
Secondly, it has no support for bulb over USB, so you'll need a third party intervalometer if you want (automatically-triggered) exposures over 30 seconds. This could be a purpose built hardware device, or a DSUSB that enables you to hook up to things like Backyard Nikon.
Finally, if you decide you want to have your camera converted, it's harder to find places to do that, particularly if you want a mono conversion.
I've got a D5100, and it's great, but honestly with the sort of money you're talking about spending I'd recommend keeping that D3100 which is perfectly acceptable for general use, and go with a mono CCD. If you're insistent on OSC, I'd recommend a OSC CCD then instead.
Until recently I was planning on sticking with dSLR, thinking that bang for buck it was better than a CCD, but once I tabled all of the important things and gave them a weighting, I found that bang for buck you can't go wrong with a purpose built CCD.
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