Mw 6.0 South Sandwich Islands Region
updated 30 November 2022

On 25 January 2022 a strong earthquake occurred in the South Sandwich Islands Region at a depth of 10 km. The seismic event occurred at 01:24:33 UTC and had an estimated moment magnitude (Mw) 6.0.

Major seismic activity was anticipated as a worst-case-scenario due to a very strong quadruple conjunction (all four conjunctions within one-and-a-half-hour) with Mercury, Venus, the Sun and Saturn. Most critical were considered the days following the conjunction (25-28 January).

Sun-Mercury-Earth         2022-01-23, 10:21:25  123°04'47"
Venus-Sun-Saturn          2022-01-25, 14:29:48  315°19'36"
Mercury-Sun-Saturn        2022-01-25, 14:59:58  315°19'38"
Sun-Mercury-Venus         2022-01-25, 15:12:39  135°22'30"
Venus-Mercury-Saturn      2022-01-25, 15:48:39  315°20'03"

Moon-Earth-Neptune        2022-01-22,  5:15:03  350°50'48"
Moon-Earth-Uranus         2022-01-25, 22:17:19   40°32'14"
					
SSGI chart
SSGI depiction of planetary (PG) and lunar (LG) geometry