* Astronomy

A strong magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred at 09:45:23 (UTC) on Saturday, September 16, 2006, in the Seram region, 155 km ENE of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia, at a depth of 10 km.

Location 3.133°S, 129.457°E

A magnitude 6.4 undersea earthquake struck Indonesia's Moluccas islands on Tuesday with a possibility of a tsunami.

"There is a possibility of a tsunami, but until now we have not received a report that it has happened" - Fauzi, head seismologist at the meteorological agency.

The epicentre of the quake is southwest of Tual island, due east of East Timor and due north of Darwin in northern Australia, at a depth of 33 km beneath the Banda Sea.

Source Reuters

A moderate magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred at 14:45:04 (UTC) on Wednesday, August 2, 2006, south of Lombok, Indonesia, 205 km SouthSouthWest of Mataram, Indonesia, at a depth of 10 km.

Location 11.163°S, 116.779°E

The Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, that consist of eight towers in the Javanese plain surrounded by more than 200 smaller shrines, was severely damaged by the earthquake on May 27th.
The temple complex , that is a UNESCO World Heritage site, had survived for more than 1000 years.

The earthquake left intricately carved and carefully restored reliefs lying on the ground.
It destroyed years of restoration work in less than a minute. One temple entrance was entirely blocked by debris.

"It will take months to identify the precise damage" - Agus Waluyo, head of the Yogyakarta Archaeological Conservation Agency.

Culturally Java is one of the richest areas in South-East Asia. While it is largely Muslim now, it has been Hindu and Buddhist in the past. Prambanan was built in the ninth and 10th centuries, with three main shrines dedicated to the chief Hindu deities, Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma.
The site was abandoned soon after construction and was rediscovered by Dutch colonials in the 18th century.
The ninth-century Borobudur, the largest Buddhist monument on Earth, was not damaged.

According to the Meteorology and Geophysics Agency (28 May), there have been 752 aftershocks (with the largest intensity recorded at 5.2 on Richter scale) following the 5.9 earthquake that struck Central Java on 27 May.

The Secretariat of the National Coordinating Board for the Management of Disaster (BAKORNAS PB) reported that there have been 20,684 houses completely destroyed and 44,445 houses damaged.
Currently, the death toll now stands at 5,136.