Mw 6.5 Banda Sea
updated 26 August 2021

On 24 October 2017 a strong earthquake occurred in the Banda Sea at a depth of 550 km. The seismic event occurred at 10:47:47 UTC and had an estimated moment magnitude (Mw) 6.5.

A series of five planetary alignments from 19 to 23 October preceded the earthquake. A convergence of planetary geometry like this has the potential to trigger major seismic activity, depending on the amount of critical stress in Earth's crust. This time only a medium sized strong earthquake occurred, although it should be mentioned that Mercury was not part of any of these alignments. Note that most of the alignments occurred after a major lunar peak.

Sun-Earth-Uranus          2017-10-19, 17:20:22   26°16'25"
Mars-Venus-Neptune        2017-10-21, 13:06:05  342°50'24"
Sun-Venus-Mars            2017-10-22,  9:17:24  162°27'02"
Venus-Sun-Neptune         2017-10-22, 15:45:51  342°53'19"
Mars-Sun-Neptune          2017-10-23,  9:35:06  342°53'35"
					
SSGI chart
SSGI depiction of planetary (PG) and lunar (LG) geometry