It what is an astonishing coincidence the day that 2012 DA 14 was supposed to make its close pass by Earth, another smaller meteor came over Chelyabinsk, in the Ural mountain region of Russia. This amazing fireball not only lit up their sky, the sonic boom could be heard for a large distance and it blew out many windows in the area. I can’t wait to here some estimates as to what the size of the meteor may be. Don Yeomans says,
“If the reports of ground damage can be verified, it might suggest an object whose original size was several metres in extent before entering the atmosphere, fragmenting and exploding due to the unequal pressure on the leading side vs. the trailing side (it pancaked and exploded). It is far too early to provide estimates of the energy released or provide a reliable estimate of the original size.”
So the interesting thing would be did some main piece hit the ground? This has caused lots of media sites to pick up the story. Here’s a BBC bit on it.
Although not as polished I did run across this video from Russia of many scenes of people as the see the meteorite. Pretty amazing.
And then there is lots of media already focused on this because of 2012 DA 14 which is much larger than the meteor in Russia. A live blog feed from the Gaurdian has lots of interesting things to read about. A CBC article too.
The whole thing reminds me of Superman