Good moonage Dave! (There's a mental image I don't need!
)
If it helps you come to grips with Registax here's a guide from what I do:
1. On Align tab: scroll through frames at 100% and pick a sharp one. Tick the Full Image box. Use multiple alignment points (6 to 12 say) 128 size box (but you can very this up or down). Don't let the alignment boxes touch or cross. Align. Adjust the Limit slider if necessary (frames are sorted by quality at this point). Press the Limit button.
2.On Optimise tab: create a reference frame from the best 10 frames or so. It will automagically stack the best 10 frames and stop at the Wavelet tab for you to sharpen. Wavelet 1 is finest, 6 is coarsest. Select Guassian Linear wavelets. I have a few different wavelet schemes but they all started life as "Dennis Wavelets": 1 = 20, 2 = 10 the rest =1.0. When you have it sharpened and adjusted how you want it, Press Do All and Continue. Thuis returns you to the optimise tab. Press Optimise
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3. On the Stack Tab, open the stack graph. The top graph is the quality graph. Sometimes its shape will suggest how many frames to stack. Move the slider across to eliminate the worst frames and leave the best about 250 or so. At the least get rid of all the concave down part of the quality curve
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Now the bottom graph is a quality and difference graph for each alignment point. Drag the difference slider down to eliminate the worst aligned/placed frames till you are left with the best 100 or so. Do this for each alignment point(!) then press the Stack Button. Save the image.
4. On the wavelet tab, your reference frame settings should be remembered... if you're happy with them, press do all.
5. On the finish tab rotate and crop the frame if you like and then Save.
Go on. Repro. Already! You know you want to...
Al.
its now feb 4 2012 
with about 7 gig worth of data
I have a lot of setting up still to do but the important thing is i am close to the pole
