Celestia Forums

An animation of the 7.1 quake which hit the Canterbury region of New Zealand on Sep 04th 2010 at 4:35am (local time), and the thousands of both major and minor aftershocks which have occurred in the following ~9 months.

Here is some background info, if you are interested, about the 3 major events:
7.1 Mag: 04 Sep 2010
6.3 Mag: 22 Feb 2011
6.3 Mag: 13 Jun 2011

DOWNLOAD (release 3):

1. After downloading, delete any earlier versions from your EXTRAS folder (concurrent installation of multiple versions may cause poor performance and inconsistent behaviour).
2. unzip the addon into your Celestia EXTRAS folder.
3. Start Celestia and click on this celURL:

cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth/2010-09-03T04:43:03.00794?x=VVp7OVM04f///////////w&y=05KzSgT83P///////////w&z=laetKgHX+////////////w&ow=-0.378401&ox=0.583351&oy=-0.446736&oz=0.562975&select=Sol:Earth&fov=25.6378&ts=5000&ltd=0&p=0&rf=18695&lm=32785&tsrc=0&ver=3

I recommend a time-rate somewhere between 5000x and 10,000x, to start with.
Use right-mouse-INFO on any selected quake as it occurs to see details of that quake at the GEONET website. (You may need to slow down or pause time completely while doing this).

Released subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike Licence.

Any comments, suggestions for improvements, etc would be appreciated.

Old Releases:

I forgot to mention that this addon was developed using Celestia version 1.6.0
It should still work in 1,5 although I recommend using 1.6 if you can.

The main event ( 7.1 on the richter scale):


First aftershock (20 minutes later) is a 5.6:


One month (and more than 1000 aftershocks later):

Aftershocks are still occurring on a regular basis, reducing in frequency, but not so much in size, so the second release adds aftershocks from 01Oct - 15Oct.
(the most recent significant one was a 4.6 mag. Oct 15 9.31 UTC (10:31 tonight local time).

This release also has been re-designed to have flattened disks, rather than spheres, to represent the quakes.

(download link updated in 1st post)

...and here's a new viewpoint:
cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth:3366146/2010-09-03T05:10:10.54021?x=X0I72hoi&y=XRsumceNDA&z=NoL5WORt6f///////////w&ow=0.0142412&ox=0.0265683&oy=-0.971751&oz=-0.234077&select=Sol:Earth:3366146&fov=25.8539&ts=10000&ltd=0&p=0&rf=18695&lm=32785&tsrc=0&ver=3

3rd update...

Download link has been added to the original post (above)
This update replaces all older versions.

Notes:
1. Release 3 covers the whole of New Zealand and surrounding area (between latitudes 33S to 48S, and longitudes 164E to 176E)
2. Includes only earthquakes of Magnitude 3 or greater, between Sep01 2010 to Jun22 2011 (today).
3. Colors now represent Magnitude, rather than focal depth.

< Mag 4 : grey
< Mag 5: blue
< Mag 6: green
>= Mag 6: red

4. Includes:

the original 7.1 of 04 Sept 2010,
the catastrophic 6.3 Mag of April 22 2011 which claimed nearly 200 lives,
and the dual 5.6 and 6.3 shocks of June 13 2011, which resulted in a single death, and caused the failure of at least 50 more buildings.

For comparison with release 3 (cc_quake_R3.zip) which covers the period Sep 2010 - Jun 2011, here is an addon showing the earthquake activity in NZ in the previous year (Sep 2009 - Aug 2010) leading up to the 7.1 event.

Download:

Note that this particular addon can be installed concurrently with any one of the other versions named cc_quake_[R1,R2,R3] as the dates do not overlap.
ie. This addon covers the baseline activity over the year leading up the the 7.1 event, while each of the 3 releases R1, R2, and R3 cover the events since then, and as they cover the same time-period, only one of those releases should be installed at any one time.


Once installed, click on this CelURL for an overview:
cel://SyncOrbit/Sol:Earth:3366146/2009-08-12T13:29:00.69234?x=KOZHSmBe/v///////////w&y=W8ZWvJsJ5v///////////w&z=gghAghjD9f///////////w&ow=0.0384261&ox=-0.0371822&oy=0.819118&oz=-0.571127&select=Sol:Earth&fov=25.8539&ts=1e+006&ltd=0&p=0&rf=18695&lm=32785&tsrc=0&ver=3

Two days to Christmas, and here we go again!.....

http://www.canterburyquakelive.co.nz/

In depth: http://www.geonet.org.nz/news/archives/2011/dec-23-2011-christchurch-hit-again-at-christmas.html

... so much for a happy new year!
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10776340
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10776300
http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/shattering-start-2012-christchurch-4672046

The earth has been fairly quiet here over the last few days, in fact yesterday was the first day since Christmas in which we went for more than 24 hours without a single quake:

Usually after things have been quite for a while, it seems that the stress is accumulating again, and soon after that, we tend to get another sizeable one, and it's been 7 days since we've had a magnitude 5 or larger. -- I figured there must be one on the way.

So, I decided to get a a feel for the statistical likelihood of a given size of quake on any given day based on the the historical frequency per day (since 04 Sep 2010), by producing the following chart which includes all earthquakes in our region since 04 Sep 2010 (excluding the big one itself):
This shows a historical average of 1 quake every five days (0.21) in the range 4.5 - 5.5 magnitude, so we were indeed overdue for one of that size.....

... and sure enough, just a few hours later, in it rolled like clockwork!! (well 2 days late, but within the statistical prediction):

Statistics don't lie!!

(Data supplied by geonet.org.nz)