Randolph, Tennessee in the area since 1974 occurred on August 19, 1994 – the temblor was measured 3.2 on the Richter scale with an epicenter at coordinates , ca. west of Randolph, at a depth of . On January 16, 2009 at 3:09 p.m. local time (21:09 UTC), "a small earthquake shook portions of Tipton County". The earthquake was measured at a magnitude 2.8 on the Richter scale. According to the Center for Earthquake Research and Information (CERI), the epicenter of the temblor was reported to be at coordinates at a depth of . There were no reports of damage caused by
Magnitude (astronomy) by astronomers are: The difference between these concepts can be seen by comparing two stars. Betelgeuse (apparent magnitude 0.5, absolute magnitude −5.8) appears slightly dimmer in the sky than Alpha Centauri (apparent magnitude 0.0, absolute magnitude 4.4) even though it emits thousands of times more light, because Betelgeuse is much farther away. Under the modern logarithmic magnitude scale, two objects, one of which is used as a reference or baseline, whose intensities (brightnesses) measured from Earth in units of power per unit area (such as watts per square metre, W m) are and , will have magnitudes and related by