Same image with some more processing via Masks in Gimp. Much better, the core is visible :)

Just for the fun: a picture made without any astronomy equipment, just my point and shoot camera and a mini 1$ tripod: I took 60 exposures of Orion (through the window) with my camera 10 x optical zoom. Each exposure is one second, ISO 1600, stacked in DSS. Anyone can do it. The resulting image is below (noisy, but Orion nebula is visible, including its color!)

M42 again, with new focal reducer for larger FOV, absolutely no comma, this is great. 140 subs of 11 seconds each. I think it's getting better