First DSO Image... what's happening in stacking?

[Notty]

FInally after 18 months of visual, planetary and solar dabbling I finally got my stuff together and was able to cobble together all my kit, software, guiding and everything in order to finally try some deep sky stuff.

My target was Andromeda.  I managed 4 x 360s subs guided, and the raw data looked promising, this is a .jpg version of one of the 4 pre-stacked subs

I also took 25 bias frames with the cap on at 1/4000, and though I tried 25 darks I only managed 12 before my battery died (didn't do any flats as I don't really yet understand how to do them, but it shouldn't preclude a half reasonable first attempt right?)  I put them all into Deep Sky Stacker and ran them using the recommended settings, but I cannot make any sense of the result.  It's a different shape and doesn't seem to relate to my subs at all :

whadafa.TIF

I tried just stacking my 4 lights to see what happens, but it's exactly the same but more washed out obviously,  All 4 subs look identical.  Anyone know what's going on?

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I had that problem. You need the latest version of DSS which has support for the 1100D, it fixes the unwanted crop. It's on the download page but it's a bit hidden.

After that you need to adjust the histogram to bring out the details of the stacked image, DSS often produces very dark images.

[Bizibilder]

Did you use the 1100D? If so you need the beta version of DSS:  http://deepskystacker.wikispaces.com/Support+for+my+new+DSLR%3F

[VigdisVZ]

Yeah, DSS is quirky and takes a while to get used to. Sub looks great tho, keep it up!

[Notty]

and that is why I love this place, thanks for that I would never have worked that out!  Downloaded and processing, fingers crossed