M 42 - The Great Orion Nebula - HDR technique used

24*F last night and the seeing wasn't great but here is an HDR image
of the Great Orion Nebula M 42. 
HDR (high dynamic range) imaging is becoming more and more popular with photography, from cell phones to professional scenic photography.
I used this technique, though poorly at the present, to hold the core of the brightest part of the nebula and still retain the faint outer "ring" of nebulosity.
This is only a combination of two images, one lasting about 2 minutes and the other less than 20 seconds.

Taken with the 480mm Daystar scope (80mm doublet refractor) and a Canon t3i camera (unmodded)

Here is the original longer exposure:

Here is the original short exposure:

I used a freeware program called "HDRtist" to do the combination. Interestingly enough, when I imported the brighter image first into that program before the shorted the combination didn't look as good as importing the images in reverse!