Thanks Matty, Dave and Gary. Ouch for you Allan, I hope you recover soon but more importantly, no damage was done to the equipment!
Here is the original image resampled down to 1280x859 to show the extent of the FOV of the Mewlon 180 at F12 with the Canon 40D.
There is much to learn about colour image processing, let alone acquiring the damn things in the first place! This incredible region is just begging for longer subs and lots more of them! Perhaps a well worn cliché, I have found M42 a wonderful and exciting object as my starting point for my long sojourn into DSLR imaging.
Cheers
Dennis