New to stacking, need help!

[Star child]

Hi, I posted a photo of my first observation of Vesta and someone suggested i downloaded deep sky tracker which i went ahead and did.

It seems its a little more complicated then i thought it might be, i had no idea about lights flats dark files although i think i have figured some of that out, i remembered someone talking about dark files at the last astro meet i went to and i think its just taking a set of photos with the lens cover on so you get a black photo, i presumed you still use the same settings that you would use for the actual photos you want to stack. And I have just figure that the light frames are the actual photos. Ok so i think that's sorted but what do i do then, i added a list of dark files and light files and then i think i had to click register them and then it would start stacking, but it gave me a message that it would not work because I am using jpeg files, it did not tell me what the best type of file to use was, so i need some advise there. Does the type of camera used make any difference, i dont have a fancy dslr camera, but my camera does allow me to do up to 15 second exposures and i can go from 80 to 800 iso (i used ISO 800) the camera is not great in low light though and i have to have the exposure quite long or the objects wont even show (it was suggested i use shorted exposure times) I hope someone is able to help me as i would like to try this stacking thing as it seems quite popular.

Thanks