Great shot Gavin.
The colours look so natural and soft. I'm seeing a few pics of Orion coming up proving that this isn't just a game of late nights but early morning too. With my setup I think I need a little more time to capture anything comparable to this so I'll probably wait another month to get up in the middle of the night.
Re: The blown out core. ( I read somewhere combining varying iso subs helps. I tried it once with my old camera that blew out really easy on high iso settings and it really helped )