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Venus-Jupiter Conjunction 2:46pm
04/30/2022
By: Zona Sur et. al.
Today, April 30th of 2022AD there is a ":close" planetary conjunction between Venus and Jupiter. Concurrently, this is coupled wit a partial eclipse of the sun viewable in South America and Antarctica. This eclipses portions of the Larsen ice shelf at the brief moment of near dusk at the Southern Pole.
Venus has a synodic period (returns to same place in sky relative to the Sun) every 1.6 years. Jupiter has a synodic period of 1.09 years. Hence, every 3.2 years, Venus is in the same position as it was relative to the Sun, and Jupiter returns to the same position in 3.27 years. As a result, there are families of conjunctions that are separated by about 3 years and 3 months that occur in a similar position relative to the Sun.
Usually as Jupiter passes by the Sun it encounters Venus only once. However when the situation is such that Jupiter encounters Venus when the latter is nearly at its greatest elongation from the Sun in the evening sky, then Venus has time to turn around and catch Jupiter in what I call a "transition conjunction" before Jupiter leaves the area. A final conjunction follows as Jupiter exits the area. This situation is shown in the diagram below. It occurred in 2015, and will again in 2036.
At the angle of incidence between the four greatest gravitational sources in our solar system, at 2:45PM Costa Rica time, we are on the lookout for effects from those crazy neutrinos and of course, a chance occurrence of a coronal mass ejection (CME). The displacement of plasma and charged particles will experience turbulence of interest in parts of the ionosphere and our planets surface and interior.
Beginning on January 31, 2002, the Larsen B enters a period of rapid, dramatic collapse. Between January 31 and March 7, the shelf loses 2,717 square kilometers (1,049 square miles). Following this period of dramatic decline, the shelf continues shedding ice at a somewhat slower pace through mid-April.
The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAs Terra satellite observes the collapse of the shelf. Sequential images from the MODIS sensor show extensive melt pond formation over the Larsen B in late January, consistent with an unusually warm summer and extended melt season. In images taken in February, several of the melt ponds have disappeared, presumably as they have drained through opening fractures in the ice. The area lost by the shelf is almost solely the region covered by melt ponds in late January.
The area lost is larger than the state of Rhode Island. In terms of weight, the amount of ice lost by early March 2002 is 720 billion tons. The shelf continues losing ice in the following weeks, the losses apparently ending by April 13, 2002.