I’ve been trying to get out and record more ARISSAT-1 passes, in the hopes of getting some nice SSTV images. If you follow @brainwagon on twitter, you are likely to see some of the more mundane images that I’ve been getting thusfar. I keep hoping to snag some truly great ones, but thus far, the earth seems to be really good at evading the lens of ARISSAT-1 while it’s above my radio horizon. For instance, today I got these two pictures:

Not exactly exciting. There is an 82 degree pass later today, maybe I’ll luck out.

One thing that might not be obvious is that ARISSat-1 has four cameras. You can tell which camera is in use by looking at the color of the RS01S logo in the upper left of the SSTV image.

• Red indicates the camera pointing along the -Y axis.
• Green indicates the +Z camera. You can sometimes see the 2m antenna in this view (as you can in the green logo image above, poking in from screen right).
• Blue is -Z pointing view, out the “bottom” of the satellite.
• Magenta is the +Y pointing camera.

When I look at the ARISSat-1 SSTV gallery hosted by AMSAT, I see that most of the “good” pictures come from the blue and magenta cameras, but it seems clear that the orientation of the satellite drifts a bit, and there is no guarantee. I’ll just keep plugging away until I get something better.