I've been into photography for several years, and never considered astrophotography until recently. I have a cheap DSLR with 18-55 mm and 55-250 mm lenses, as well as a pretty cheap tripod that I've had no problem with for long exposures before. Buying an equatorial mount would be the next logical step, but I'm not ready to invest that much money without a little more experience beyond a couple of 25 and 30 second exposures (My 'best' photos are here, so I clearly have a lot of learning to do.). I have recently learned about Deep Sky Stacker from this sub, and would like to try and use it.

That being said, I have a few questions about what I'm hoping to attempt. Using my 55-250mm lens, I am planning on aiming it at M42, and trying to produce an image.

1). While I can update the direction that my tripod is pointing my camera, it will certainly be less accurate and precise than an equatorial mount. Is there any way that DSS would be able to correct for this?

2). What type of exposure would be good? While I was shocked when I came to this sub about how high the ISO numbers were, I realize that with that many images, and such low resolution, that the ISO is not AS important. I'm assuming that I would want my lens as wide open as possible (at 250mm, it would be f/5.6). I figure that my main concern would be to have a relatively fast shutter speed, and just take many images over the course of an hour or so.

3). Speaking of shutter speed, are there any recommendations on what would be ideal, as my camera will not be tracking along with the relative motion of the star.

4).What is the difference between the dark frames and the bias frames that I am supposed to take? As for the flat frames, can I just hold up a piece of paper with a light behind it in my apartment, and have that count for the flat frame?

Thank you in advance for any help; I'm excited to learn about this type of photography.

Ninja edit: Formatting