“Combo-bite”

When the grandkids were young, one of which still is, we often resorted to offering “combo-bites” to get them to eat some things they may not have otherwise eaten. Obviously, a combo-bite is a bite that contains more than one type of food. In today's entry, the combo-bite is a combination of two of my hobbies: amateur astronomy and amateur radio. I'll start with the radio, which was the reception of an image via slow scan TV from the International Space Station. The image was one of several sent from the ISS celebrating the 20^th anniversary of amateur radio on the ISS, referred to not surprisingly as ARISS. This was the image sent at 10:46 EST (1546Z) and is one of many different images sent from the ISS. Obviously, the ISS needed to be flying overhead, so I used the Heavens-Above.com website to track the ISS to know when it was overhead and for how long it would be visible (usually about 10 minutes). The most I could get in any one pass was 2 images. I was able to receive 8 such images, 6 of which are different. Had I been willing to stay up around the clock (I wasn't), I could get a pass about every 90 minutes and received lots of images. However, I think the ISS was transmitting only about 6 to 10 different images, and I suspect it would have become something less than fun around 2AM. Anyway, here's the 12/26/2020 1546Z image, which was the best of the 8 received.

Image from International Space Station, via SSTV

The other image for today was inspired by the first activity. On the images received on December 29^th, I noticed a fair amount of noise. At the time, I wondered if the noise could have been caused by solar activity. I remembered later that, while possible, it was highly unlikely to have been caused by the sun that day. None the less, I decided to look at the sun. There was more than usual activity, so I tried to image it. Results below.