Detection and Kirchhoff type migration of seismic events by use of a new characteristic function The classical method of seismic event localization is based on the picking of body wave arrivals ray tracing and inversion of travel time data. Travel time picks with small uncertainties are required to produce reliable and accurate results with this kind of source localization. Hence recordings with a low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) cannot be used in a travel time based inversion. Low SNR can be related with weak signals from distant and or low magnitude sources as well as with a high level of ambient noise. Diffraction stacking is considered as an alternative seismic event localization method that enables also the processing of low SNR recordings by mean of stacking the amplitudes of seismograms along a travel time function. The location of seismic event and its origin time are determined based on the highest stacked amplitudes (coherency) of the image function. The method promotes an automatic processing since it does not need travel time picks as input data. However applying diffraction stacking may require longer…