Weather imaging satellites are constantly orbiting the earth, spinning and beeping.  As it turns out, you can turn these beeps into pictures with a fairly cheap setup.  At minimum all you need is a ~$10 RTL-SDR USB dongle on eBay and some free software!  Even building a specialized antenna isn't very costly, mine was only $38 in materials.  For less than $50 you can build a pretty effective setup!

The signal is known as "APT" (automated picture transmission) and has been used by weather satellites since the 60's.  It's an analog signal broadcast over FM on the satellite band of frequencies (~137mhz). 

My first images were all received with daisy chained alligator clips ~2m in length.  Although some came in clearly, most were completely noisy or altogether nonexistant.  You more or less have to get totally lucky and have the satellite pass right overhead. 

After being frustrated by too many failures, I decided to build myself a QFH (quadrificular heix) antenna.  I have read that a turnstile antenna can also be effective.  I went with the QFH after seeing it could be attic-mounted (I am currently renting and have no inclination to climb around on the roof if I'm just going to be moving out in less than a year).

The Antenna

The QFH antenna was constructed using plans from here.  All the default settings are fine for our purposes.

For the large support, I used 3" dia PVC pipe.  The smaller supports were cut from 1/2" PVC.  The wire was the largest copper grounding wire I could buy from the hardware store.  The coax cable was just 30' of RG-6 (this should be cut down to the minimum you require after mounting).