Night time digital photography?

What's a good digital camera for taking pictures of stars and the milkyway while staying within a pretty low budget (like under $200)? Thanks!

Sounds like you are interested in astronomy do you have a good telescope? If you already have a telescope and you remaining budget is a mere $200 then perhaps what I would suggest is a used film SLR camera from KEH.com and a telescope mount which will allow you to make photographs of deep space objects like stars or galaxies. Check out the link about astrophotography.

Look towards the powershot camera's with manual exposure settings but i think most of their timed exposure modes only go to 30 seconds if that's the sort of pic you are looking to get...

For 200 dollars you could get yourself a decent old slr with a good 50mm lens which will get you better results than a digital camera.

Look for a camera with a wide aperture, that's the number that looks like "F/3.5 - F/16" You want the small number to be as small as possible, F/1.4 is the smallest in popular cameras (as far as I know). F/2.8 is fairly common in Canon cameras. That number refers to how wide the aperture can open up. The smaller the number, the bigger the aperture, the more light can go in, the better your night pictures. But in general, you're going to need a tripod or someway to keep the cam steady. The best way is to set the camera, turn on the timer, then you won't shake the cam accidentally when pressing the button.

my dear,
u are aiming for stars with just $200, that too digital camera..
think once again..

IMO for the best results you should buy a Pentax K1000 35mm film camera. Any digital camera in your price range will have a small sensor which isn't suitable for long exposures - if the camera even allows long exposures.

Another thing to consider is since the earth rotates, time exposures will produce either star trails (steaks) or very blurred images. To successfully photograph the Milky Way you'll need a good telescope with an equatorial mount. This specialized mount actually "tracks" the subject, keeping the telescope pointed at it as the earth rotates.

Here are some references that might help you:

astropix.com

skyandtelescope.com/howto/astrophotogr...

g.webring.com/hub?ring = astrophotography

If you want to shoot images of the stars you will have to shoot using film and not digital. With digital you can only have a long exposure of 30 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the camera. You would get to much noise ("grain") using digital. Plus you want to shoot pictures of the stars and maintain a sharp image, that means you need a drive attached to a good telescope to do astrophotography. This will track the star as if it were sitting still (remember the earth moves not the stars). So for you to get a good image of the "Milky-way" etc. you will have to have a good exposure measured in hours depending on the film, and ISO you choose to use.

Hope this helps,
Kevin