Thanks Robbie for your compliments - hope that alignment and tracking stays put and remains solid as it is now for unguided work, though I have a Orion Starshoot Autoguider it has not seen any work so far as it apparently is not needed!
Geoffro - I don't know why the color is as it is now!!
Before I posted it, it did look more bluey than very reddish - perhaps my fiddling around after seeing other shots of M42 influenced the way it ended up plus the fact that my new laptop has not even been color-calibrated for PS CS2 work yet - I have since discovered that there are more details in the image than what is showing in this particular pix so I will try to brush up more on my CS2 processing techniques before posting any more shots, also been too busy recently with work hence this belated reply and the full moon around does not lend to spending time for astro-work at all
Cheers, Bill