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Venus-Jupiter Conjunction in Volcanic Sunset.
On Sunday evening (5th February) an almost cloudless sky and crystal clear atmospheric conditions in the wake of Tropical Storm Freddy combined to provide perfect views of Venus and Jupiter three days after close conjunction setting in an unusually bright volcanic sunset produced by another concentration of circulating stratospheric volcanic aerosols derived from the Hunga-Tonga eruption over 14 months ago! This enabled the planets, still fairly close together, to be photographed descending in many shades of coloured sky in the vicinity of a receding volcanic sunset twilight arch for more than an hour after the Sun had disappeared below the horizon. That there should still be significant concentrations of volcanic aerosols circulating in the Southern Hemisphere stratosphere more than a year after the eruption is testimony to the tremendous power of the volcanic event. The after effects of this have attracted surprisingly little attention and feedback despite the posting by myself (and other observers in Australia) of more than 300 volcanic sunset and sunrise images captured since 15th January 2022! For those interested a montage of 308 volcanic sunsets observed from Mutare may be viewed at https://earthsky.org/earthsky-community-photos/entry/55492/ and a slideshow at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXrrMkXVzFA