Poetry, for Gilbert, was "a witnessing to magnitude.
Musson added: "That kind of [induced] earthquake can go up to magnitude 6.5, let's say.
The measured strength of the initial quake was upgraded on Wednesday to magnitude 7.8, from 7.5.
Having memorised the position of 1,000 stars down to magnitude six, he now set out to familiarise himself with an additional 20,000-plus dimmer stars.
When it hit the market in May, it was proclaimed the most expensive home ever formally listed in the country, and an extraordinary monument to magnitude.
The Tirion Sky Atlas 2000.0 (1981) includes some 43,000 stars to magnitude eight and is based primarily on the SAO Star Catalog.
In a recent paper, published in Bulletin of Volcanology, Ben Mason, David Pyle and Clive Oppenheimer of Cambridge University apply a scaling system that groups eruptions according to magnitude.
By Christmas, though, it may have dimmed again to magnitude 5 but it will be so far north as to be circumpolar for Britain and visible throughout the night as it tracks towards Polaris.
Using data from Japan's meteorological agency, the institute said earthquakes of up to magnitude 6 had occurred five times more frequently than in normal years since the March disaster.
More intriguingly, the researchers calculate that the impact would have generated thousands of earthquakes of up to magnitude 9.9 (significantly more powerful than the largest recorded by modern seismologists) for hundreds of kilometres around.
Like other nuclear power stations in Japan, the massively built reactor buildings at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa were supposed to be able to come through earthquakes up to magnitude 7 totally unscathed.
