Digital Cameras

Hello everybody,

I am a newbie in astrophotography. I wanted to ask if somebody in this
group knows about the following items:

1. if there is a cheap digital camera in the market that I can use to
capture images in the night sky without a telescope (I know this sounds
bizzare but I guess with a long enough exposure time I should get some
photographs of the night sky with stars in them - at least that's what
a I think).
2. if there are digital cameras that I can control through a program
(Linux based OR Windows based - it doesn't matter - I have both OSes
installed on my hard drive)

Thanks everyone!

Zefram Cochrane