[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Steve - presuming that you're talking about a full kit - scope and all?

I reckon a 8 to 10" Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount. You won't fit a motor driven EQ mount, scope and camera into $1,000 if it's new. Call the scope done at around $550 to $660.

You can then but a Philips 840-IIPro or SPC-900 ToUcam off eBay for around $100 to $150 landed. That still leaves you with around $200 for a couple of decent GSO EP's as well. With a a ToUcam and Dobsonian mount, you can have Registax align the resultant image frames for you, within limits. At least you won't have to bother with a polar alignment regimen. Plenty of people use their Dobs for this purpose - just ask Mike Salway for one.

This is all presuming that you already own a laptop, mind you. If not - you can grab one off eBay for a couple of hundred that might do the job - as long as it has a fast-ish USB port and a bit of memory (512Mb at least).