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I shoot almost exclusively using a DSLR and 70-200 f2.8 on a regular tripod. Nobody NEEDS expensive gear to do astrophotography. My experience is people have unrealistic expectations about whats involved in astrophotography and just like in photography many people expect to just hit a button and get an award winning photo. If YOU don't understand what factors influence a photo (start with exposure triangle and comprehend it thoroughly) then you'll forever capture below what you're capable of with your gear. The word "need" pisses me off when people use it, because its often bad advice. There are ways around what the expensive gear gives you that let you take great shots with what you have right now, today, no more to pay, etc etc. "Want" is often the more appropriate word to use. Nobody NEEDS a tracking mount, they WANT to aim for one because its better than without, but NEED implies its required, but it isnt. Numbers are useless too, dont get hung up over ISO numbers particularly, as they are wrong anyway plus every physical sensor of the same chip will have its own characteristics and will change for any iso setting with local temperature etc too. ignore all the specs crap you can get around all that, ignore megapixels or sensors size they are all meaningless, you can do astrophotography with a cameraphone and jpegs, sure it limits how far you can push the data but its NOT impossible to work with.
Also the definition of astrophotography I dont think is well understood and misused, just as it is with photography. Too many people go buy a DSLR and then declare themselves as "photographers" and they just havent a clue. Their photos scream "idiot" to everyone else too.
What the more expensive lenses/OTAs give you is better light transmission with less distortion. Photography is about capturing photons and astrophotography in particular you're capturing very few photons and want to maximise the chance of capturing them. Part of that can involve a more sensitive sensor or a larger aperture or longer exposure time. Because astrophotography signal is often so very faint we try to maximise every factor to make the most of the capture session. Part of this is could be throwing money at more gear, but this has no limit really, there are "good value" options which a newbie would say were very expensive, but for what they allow they really arent. Part of it is what and how you capture, using lots of data, often hours of captures and how you then process it all. Its NOT a one click process to get a great pic of nebulosity or galaxies, if it was then you are still miles away from what that one click solution will give you by using multiple "one clicks" and aligning/stacking etc. Part of getting a good pic is the software and YOUR workflow with it. Ultimately it all just takes work and effort to get a really good pic, yes its possible to get a quick easy good pic with good gear, but that same gear with a bit of effort will yield a spectacular pic and is wasted in the hands of someone unwilling or incapable of using it to its fullest. Like buying a ferrari doesnt give you the skill to drive it.
Brands, nope keep away from the flame wars, Canon and Nikon both make great cameras and lenses neither is better than the other. Period. Canon have been more friendly towards astrophotography with some specific models while Nikon are new at doing this. Again this doesn't mean you can't use Nikon (I do) but across the history of both makers Canon generally comes out ahead. A different between them is the distance in their camera bodies between the focal plane (where the film or sensor sits to accept photons) and the lens mount. In Canon bodies there is a bit more room and so "in body" clip-in filters became available to help astrophotographers while only recently these have appeared for some Nikon models, so again on the whole Canon is a better choice. Its nothing to do with ISO or camera features or better brands, there are simply slightly more options available to Canon than Nikon for astrophotographers to capitalise on in their astrophotography.
What a more expensive DSLR gives you over an entry level DSLR is more camera features/control. But if you dont learn and understand them all you get is a slight different in noise and megapixels. As processing is about reducing noise and increasing signal any little improvement to the foundation of your capture train can give you big gains in the final image in terms of detail and contrast . A big heavy tracking mount will be less effected by tiny vibrations and track accurately, good quality optics reduces lost photons and distortion and a good camera captures a truer more sensitive image without introducing noise to the signal.
The cheap crap gear will give you a potential image of maybe 90% (0 being no image, 100 being best possible in existence), certaintly plenty for facebook. Like building a car to do 200kph is pretty easy for even cheap makers. adding 5% on top though takes exponentially more skill to achieve, getting to 99.9% is almost impossible and I don't think humanity has done that with astrophotography yet. Thats what paying the money for extra gear gets you is fractions of a percent better results IF YOU put in the effort.
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