http://www.freewebz.com/eq-forecasting/128c.gif

It can easily be seen that those powerful earthquakes favored times when the moon was close to the sun in the sky. 10 of the 17 occurred at such times.

Comments:

For some time now I have been telling other scientists around the world that my data are strongly indicating to me that earthquakes are often being triggered when fault zones are bent, stretched, and compressed in certain directions by forces related directly and/or indirectly with the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon. And I believe that this is just what those high magnitude earthquake data are saying.

Additionally, I have an abstract for a technical paper or presentation by a group which I believe is somehow connected with Tbilisi State University in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. They studied sun and moon related earthquake triggering effects in one or more Caucasian mountain area earthquake fault zones. And if I understood what they said correctly, they concluded that powerful earthquakes are being triggered in that area when the sun is roughly on a line perpendicular (20 - 30 degree angles with the 40 degree longitude line) to the direction of the fault zones, and when the moon is on a line roughly parallel (60 degree angle with the 40 degree longitude line) to the direction of tectonic forces in the area.

So, their data also appear to me to support that sun and moon gravity related fault zone bending and stretching earthquake triggering theory. And as I have said before, it is something of a mystery to me why earthquake researchers have not already thoroughly investigated this subject matter. The work is so easy to do that a bright high school student could probably generate a few publications in this area.