AbstractElastic waves, produced by temporally and spatially finite fault ruptures during earthquakes, propagate through the Earth. Recordings of these waves at the Earth's surface provide the data for reconstruction of the source properties, including location, spatial and temporal extents, and rupture velocities. A 2D finite‐difference solution of the elastic wave equation is used to numerically extrapolate synthetic observations backward in time to create images of the energy release during an earthquake.