The earthquake in the Banda Sea this morning may have been triggered
by an X-Class solar flare which was in progress at this time of the
event. This was the first X-flare since September 24 when an X-2.4
flare occurred. The Mw 6.0 in the Virgin Islands, near the antipode of
today's earthquake had also been associated with a solar flare - see
yesterday's earthquake summary for more details on this.
The maximum output of this flare activity was between 1:00 and 3:00 UT
(including several following M-class flares). The areas which were
sub-solar at the time of this activity were between 60W and
30E and anti-solar areas are 120E to 150W. The Banda Sea earthquake
is near the geomagnetic equator and within the anti-solar regions.

This general area was expected to be a primary zone for far-field
triggering from the Kamchatka earthquakes as stated in the far-field
report:

"The most likely events of M>=5 in the next 10 days on the
basis of history and far-field triggering theory appear to be:

....Molucca Sea/Halmahera"

The epicenter of this event is at the edge of the Molucca Sea
just south of Halmahera.

Halmahera was also an area where triggering from Guam was
expected.

Following are the parameters of this Mw 7.5 earthquake in Indonesia
(NEIS):

01/10/19 03:28:40 4.09S 123.89E 10.0 7.5M A BANDA SEA

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/quake/gldfs.cr.usgs.gov/name=quake

and the parameters of the group of solar flares which preceded it

FLARE # START MAX END MAX OUT CLASS
4380 + 0056 0124 0237 32000 X1.6
4460 0220 0232 0246 M1.2
4430 0252 0258 0303 M1.4
4470 0314 0316 0318 M1.0
Source:
http://sec.noaa.gov/ftpdir/indices/events/20011019events.txt