Space news

ARISS will be conducting an SSTV experiment from the International Space Station (ISS) beginning December 25th and running through January 5th.

Officially titled Expedition 72 – ARISS Series 23 SSTV Experiment, interested listeners can receive SSTV images in PD120 mode from the ISS on 145.800 MHz. There will be 12 different images in the series coming from callsign RS0ISS. Received images can be uploaded to the ARISS SSTV gallery at https://ariss-usa.org/ARISS_SSTV/.

Earth is entering a stream of debris from rock comet 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Forecasters expect the shower to peak on Friday night, Dec. 13th, with a dozen or so meteors per hour visible in bright moonlight. The best time to look is 2 a.m. local time (Saturday morning) when the constellation Gemini is high in the sky.

Sunspot 3912 erupted today (Dec. 8 @ 0906 UT), producing an X2-class solar flare and a shortwave radio blackout over southern Africa. The impulsive flare is the latest in a series of increasingly intense explosions this weekend:

The explosion produced a CME, but an initial analysis suggests it will miss Earth, passing just ahead of our planet in its orbit around the sun. More X-flares are possible in the days ahead because there are two sunspots (3912 and 3917) with unstable magnetic fields.