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Hi and welcome Casey. Lots of things need to be taken into account to get you imaging successfully.
First and most important is the mount which carries and controls almost all of your imaging quality. The mount should be the very best you can afford. A HEQ5Pro will do the job but for an extra small amount you can get an EQ6Pro which is more sturdy, has a greater carrying capacity (allows for future upgrades of telescope, camera and general hardware)and larger operating gears which makes guiding smoother. The mount must also have an ST4 guide port in it's control system.
Next is the guiding. This doesn't need to be anything flash as long as it is fitted to whatever imaging scope you choose very rigidly. A basic guide camera with ST4 Guide output or a shoestring astronomy GPUSB adapter to interface with the guide port.
Next is your imaging scope. This is a personal choice item. An ED80 will give you lovely wide field images encompassing almost all of the major nebulas in our sky. If you want to image small galaxies the ed80 is probably a little short on focal length. The unfortunate thing is that there is no one scope fits all in imaging.
You will of course need a camera. This is again a personal choice item. You can look at the likes of a DSI, DSLR, One shot colour CCD or a mono CCD and colour filters. All of these vary quite a lot in cost and learning curve. My recommendation would be a DSLR, unmodified. This gives you an imaging camera which can be used for happy snaps as well as the astro work.
Whichever way you go you will need some method of attaching the camera to the telescope. This is relatively simple a T adapter is the usual method and quite inexpensive.
You will also need either a field flattener or comma corrector, depending on your choice of telescope. This can be expensive but some less expensive products are available which work quite well.
The one thing I will say is be prepared to spend at least twice what you expect at the moment. There is always something better coming on the market which helps or improves the end result. The biggest expense is going to be your mount and my advice is to buy the best you can afford with the best carrying capacity you can afford and don't load it to heavily. If you stick with a target loading of no more than 2/3 of the rated capacity you will find your guiding is better and your overall images will be better.
Good luck with this very costly, bottomless expence hobbie.
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