About
            once a year, I try my hand at imaging Saturn. As you know from
            many of my past attempts, the seeing here in Payson is always
            very poor and this type of high magnification imaging has never
            been my forte. But I still try! Last night, we had a break in
            the dense monsoon cloud cover that is prevalent this time of
            year in the High Country, and the moon and Saturn were about
            5 degrees apart in northern Scorpius. Normally, I do lunar imaging
            with a DMK51 black and white for the best resolution. Tonight
            - I thought that after trying to get some color shots of Saturn,
            Id go for a few shots of the moon. The color cam will have about
            half the resolution of a standard CCD, but Im pleased to say
            this result here is better than I expected. White balance for
            all lunar and Saturn pictures was on the Lunar Highlands, which
            is a nice neutral gray color due to over pulverized basalt rock.
            All images are full size - which for this camera is 1290 x 960
            RGB.
 

            
Saturn
            - 2.5x Televue Powermate with the 12.5" f/5 Newtonian

            

in
 

            
Saturn
            - 5x Televue Powermate. (stop laughing!)

            

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Moon
            - Prime focus at 62.5" FL Next few images

            

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Moon
            - same region as above, color enhanced to show shades of browns...

            

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Moon
            - 5x Powermate. Next two shots.

            

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 Conclusion
            - This camera can do a fine job on the moon with a neutral color
            balance. BUT the noise is huge, and no amount of processing would
            result in an acceptable image that did not look plasticy. The
            camera is extremely slow with its Bayer mask over the chip. I
            had to do both 1/15 second exposure and turn the gain to the
            absolute maximum of 1000 to get any image at all of Saturn at
            5x. 

Processing:
            50/1000 best frames, alignment in Autostakkert, Wavelets in Registax,
            Levels and Contrast Masking In Photoshop CS2,
Instrument:  12.5" f/5 with 2.5x - 5x Barlow
Platform:  Astrophysics AP1200
CCD Camera:  Image Source DBK41 USB
Filter:  None
Exposure:  Varies sec  15fps
Location:  Payson, Arizona
Elevation:  5150 ft.
Sky:  Seeing 3/5, Transparency 7/10
Outside Temperature:  75F