[tell09]

My suggestions are: For visual astronomy on a budget - a Dobsonian, at least 8 inch. (this is not really expensive)

For visual astronomy with tracking a good CAT for small field, planetary, or a good Newtonian or for more money a Refractor. Each type of telescope has its pros/cons.

Visually you won't see much color, maybe on planets or some stars. Normally you will see everything grey. Deep Space Objects like clusters, nebula, etc...look like blobs of smoke (well the ring nebula does look like a small ring and others are unique). The Orion Nebula in winter is incredible (but it is cold outside)

For astrophotography a really good mount (Expensive). Mount is the most important, then depending on what you want to do: for large objects/DLSR, for smaller dimmer objects, 70mm APO refractor plus dedicated CMOS imager plus star tracker (even a good mount has tracking errors).

Ultimately the issue with Astrophotography is that it is quite expensive and even after you have all of the dedicated hardware you need software and image processing/stacking to get any good images...after all Deep Space Objects are really faint.