Mw 7.2 Kermadec Islands, New Zealand

On 15 June 2019 a major earthquake occurred at the Kermadec Islands, New Zealand at a depth of 10 km. The seismic event occurred at 22:54:59 UTC and had an estimated moment magnitude (Mw) 7.2.

A series of planetary alignments occurred from 8 to 16 June, but strong seismic activity (M6+) did not occur until 14 June when Earth aligned with Mars and Saturn. An alignment with these three planets often triggers strong seismic activity (~M6.7) within one or two days. The alignments on 8-9 June could have easily resulted in larger seismic activity, but Earth was involved in long-time alignments (marked by PG on the SSGI graph) starting on 10 June with the Sun-Earth-Jupiter alignment, which is not considered critical. On 13 June the Moon aligned with Uranus, which was in an alignment with the Sun and Venus five days earlier. In the morning of 15 June Mercury aligned with Venus and Uranus, which was immediately followed by a relatively small lunar peak. In addition, Earth was in a long time alignment with Mercury and Saturn from 15 to 17 June.

#HighLunarPeak, #Venus

Sun-Venus-Uranus          2019-06-08,  5:47:52   32°46'34"
Mercury-Sun-Neptune       2019-06-09,  7:22:08  346°28'27"
Sun-Earth-Jupiter         2019-06-10, 15:16:07  259°12'37"
Mars-Earth-Saturn         2019-06-14, 15:24:36  288°41'49"
Mercury-Venus-Uranus      2019-06-15,  9:04:58   32°25'43"
Mercury-Earth-Saturn      2019-06-16, 13:49:31  288°34'29"

Moon-Earth-Neptune        2019-06-10,  4:52:24  348°25'24"
Moon-Earth-Uranus         2019-06-13, 12:51:06   34°58'45"
Moon-Earth-Venus          2019-06-15, 23:59:09   68°11'39"
					

SSGI COMMON graph of critical planetary (PG) and lunar (LG) geometry