You could approach astronomy as a valuable amateur, studying space from your own back yard. Or you could take a professional approach, studying mathematics or physics as far as you can go, which would be a Ph.D., hopefully. As an amateur astronomer, there are alternatives to buying an expensive brand name telescope. It should be easy to find instructions for building your own telescope, perhaps a reflector,which uses a large concave mirror instead of a lense. There is a new project that may interest you. A group of astronomers, inspired by the
One Laptop Per Child project have designed a telescope that costs about U.S. $20. "The
Galileoscope (TM) is a high-quality, low-cost telescope kit developed for the International Year of Astronomy 2009 by a team of leading astronomers, optical engineers, and science educators." The project is introduced in the recent blog post "
Galileoscope: A dream of 1 Telescope Per Child", which includes a detailed photo of the moon, which was taken with the telescope.