I am not sure how to get colour into the shot- is it just a matter of longer exposure times, hence an EQ tracking mount or barn door mount?
Decent polar alignment should give you unguided exposures of 30 secs on a basic RA driven mount. Using a f1.8 50mm lens should record heaps of detail and colour. these wide field milky way shots are my favourite.
I am not sure if I should shoot in RAW (or RAW+JPG, at least). Will DeepSkyStacker handle RAW images from a Nikon D80?
Up to you, RAWs for best quality, JPEG for getting used to photo stacking and processing. Start off with JPEG to get the hang of DSS and PS then move on to RAWs (unless your computer has lots of grunt!? DSS will handle RAWs as I remember. A better/more advanced upgrade is ImagesPlus, it's not free though but it's a goody! They do have a free demo to try out - you have to convert RAWs to TIFF or JPEG format to work in it. Registax , although primarily for planetary AVI stacking can work with deep sky pics - once again have to convert RAWs for use in it and it's free!
Plus, my photoshop skills are a bit weak at the moment so stuff like colour correction, etc. needs to be studied and worked on a bit.
Many brains to pick on IIS, but there are lots of Astrophotography tutorials for various aspects of imaging dotted around all over the web - google it!
Here's a good one for starters... http://www.astropix.com/HTML/J_DIGIT/TOC_DIG.HTM
The Levels and Curves tools are now your best friends!!
I have a ways to go but getting an image...it's quite addictive.
Lots of us know that one DJDD, too damn addictive
All the best and have fun!
Doug