[raymo]

Hi Chris, firstly 4 secs is a very short exposure, so you are not going to get large numbers of stars unless you used a high ISO setting. What ISO
did you use? When starting out in astrophotography don't bother with darks, you can use them when you become a little more proficient; just
enable the high ISO and long exposure functions in your camera, and
the camera will automatically take a dark after each exposure.
To get more stars registering in DSS, and therefore get all your frames stacked, just move the percentage slider further to the left a
bit, and do the star check. Do this again if necessary until you get between 10 and 50 stars. If you go far beyond 50 the registering and stacking will take a long time, unless you have a very fast comp.
You have other things to deal with before attempting stacking images.
Produce quality single frames first. Your focus is way off, how are you doing it? Your stars are not round. These two things need fixing before
you attempt anything further.
If you are interested, at the bottom centre of your image it looks as though you have captured The Toby Jug Nebula; the bright star with a tiny golden coloured cross running through it.
raymo