Meteor shower in Chelyabinsk, Central Russia

[Polar Maritime]

RUSSIAN METEOR UPDATE: On Friday, February 15th at 9:30 am local time in Russia, a small asteroid struck the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk and exploded. According to reports from news organizations and Russian authorities, as many as 1000 people received minor injuries from the shock wave. This is the most energetic recorded meteor strike since the Tunguska impact of 1908.

Researchers have conducted a preliminary analysis of the event. "Here is what we know so far," says Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "The asteroid was about 15 meters in diameter and weighed approximately 7000 metric tons. It struck Earth's atmosphere at 40,000 mph (18 km/s) and broke apart about 12 to 15 miles (20 to 25 km) above Earth's surface. The energy of the resulting explosion was in the vicinity of 300 kilotons of TNT." (continued below)

"A shock wave propagated down and struck the city below, causing large numbers of windows to break, some walls to collapse, and minor damage throughout the city," he continued. "When you hear about injuries, those are undoubtedly due to the effects of the shock wave, not due to fragments striking the ground. There are undoubtedly fragments on the ground, but as of this time we know of no recovered fragments that we can verify."

Videos of the event may be found here and here. In many of the videos you can hear the sound of windows shattering as the meteor's loud shock wave reaches the ground. Onlookers cry out in Russian as alarms and sirens sound in the background. This pair of wide-angle gif animations is also worth watching: #1, #2.

It is natural to wonder if this event has any connection to today's

of asteroid 2012 DA14. Paul Chodas of the Near Earth Object Program at JPL says no. "The Russian fireball is not related to 2012 DA14 in any way. It's an incredible coincidence that we have had these two rare events in one day." http://www.spaceweather.com/

[Polar Maritime]

Updated data/info from NASA (SDO)..

Update: February 15, 2013 7pm PST

New information provided by a worldwide network of sensors has allowed scientists to refine their estimates for the size of the object that entered that atmosphere and disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, at 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).

The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth's atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released. These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world – the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk. The infrasound data indicates that the event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor's airborne disintegration took 32.5 seconds. The calculations using the infrasound data were performed by Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

Edited February 16, 2013 by Polar Maritime

[Beverley Lass]

No nothing yet, the Cuba one could well be a hoax !

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9875149/Fireballs-reported-in-skies-above-Cuba-and-California.html

A little more on the other meteor sightings.

B.

[ZONE 51]

The image above contains the original photo/frame and an adjusted brightness image where i reduced brightness and gamma with an enlargement box that shows a small amount of extra detail in the center of the fireball.

Edited February 16, 2013 by ElectricSnowStorm

[Methuselah]

No nothing yet, the Cuba one could well be a hoax !

The rumour is - so they say - that all those who witnessed the initial event have now gone blind. Not so sure about the reports of escapes from greenhouses, though...

[ZONE 51]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9873053/Graphic-Russian-meteor-impact-explained.html

The smoke trail.. anyone think it was the height of a cumulus cloud? certainly looks it to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumulus_cloud

[Snowangel-MK]

[The watcher]

Haha, I'd have put the black bomb one on there though.

[Bobby]

The image above contains the original photo/frame and an adjusted brightness image where i reduced brightness and gamma with an enlargement box that shows a small amount of extra detail in the center of the fireball.

I'm sure that darker patch is just the lampost in front of the fireball. You'd never see any detail in a superheated fireball like that.

[ZONE 51]

I'm sure that darker patch is just the lampost in front of the fireball. You'd never see any detail in a superheated fireball like that.

Was thinking that to, although the distance lampposts are more pointed upwards. Need to analyse the film through the frames, maybe post some frames or something from it, my techniques i use have been used on my analysis of UFO films. As you say, superheated fireball ,so i won't expect to actually find any detail! Edited February 18, 2013 by ElectricSnowStorm

[ZONE 51]

Any ideas of what this other object could be tracking across the path of the meteor?

I have put together an image, it's a frame from a news video.

Video below starts at 45seconds around where above image/frame was taken.

http://youtu.be/36MEsWC1Pzc?t=45s

Edit..

It looks as though the other object could be the wires, as the movie is being taken while driving it gives the impression it is moving as two angles of movement are in the video.

Edited February 18, 2013 by ElectricSnowStorm

[Bishop Brennan]

Any ideas of what this other object could be tracking across the path of the meteor?

Could be anything really - even a fly on the car windscreen.

Bish

[The watcher]

Makes it more interesting if we think it was an anti-aircraft or interceptor missile.

[Cheshire Freeze]

Could be anything really - even a fly on the car windscreen.

Bish

Unlikely to be a fly given the cold temperatures at the time. Guess we wont know.

[Bishop Brennan]

Makes it more interesting if we think it was an anti-aircraft or interceptor missile.

I love the animated gif in your signature, Watcher

Bish

[4wd]

It's the roadside wires with motion blur or out of focus I'm sure, but an interesting idea that they might have tried to intercept what some were openly describing as a US weapon.

[ZONE 51]

I don't think it was any weapon like a small atomic missile, or in fact any weapon from Earth...

This is fascinating stuff to study, it's important some of the rock is found to know what material it's made of.

[ZONE 51]

They might have found some of the meteor!

Fragments from a meteorite have been found in Russia's Urals region where it struck on Friday, injuring some 1,200 people, Russian scientists say.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21494963

Another quote from above link:

Scientists have played down suggestions that there is any link between the event in the Urals and 2012 DA14, an asteroid which raced past the Earth later on Friday at a distance of just 27,700km (17,200 miles) - the closest ever for an object of that size.

What are others thoughts on whether the two events are connected?

My thoughts below on the risk..

Now depending on what way you look at this then it could be a greater concern that scientists say that the Urals meteor event was not/unlikely connected to the 2012 DA14 Asteroid. First thoughts were i imagined that DA14 pulled in the Chelyabinsk meteor, then the distance of the two seemed that this may not be possible, the gravitational field effect, magnetic fields..

What i now imagine is that the risk is greater for this to occur again with a higher probability then if it was related to the 2012 DA14 Asteroid.

Edited February 19, 2013 by ElectricSnowStorm

[Crepuscular Ray]

They were not connected, at all. The Chelyabinsk bolide was just a coincidence. The gravitational field of DA14, compared with that of the Earth, is minuscule completely incapable of making anything but an infintesmal difference in the bolide's trajectory. On top of that, they merged from totally different directions, which would lead to the conclusion that theyweren't related.

Edited February 19, 2013 by Crepuscular Ray

[The watcher]

Yes, one from the North and one from the South I think. Hard to describe space in 2d though, like we do Earth. It's outward spreading and so describing direction is somewhat of a task.

[legritter]

Just thought i would post this in here as not sure where else to post .apart from weather im also into astronomy ,over the past severall months i have seen a good few very bright meteors not your ordinary shooting stars but good sized lumps .i do not have the date but back in january after midnight i observed a very bright meteor which lasted several seconds and seemed to crash into another part of meteor ahead of the main action ,it was almost like a burning rag shooting across the sky .also had the pleasure a couple of weeks back of seeing ISS ,the beauty of human engineering and of course a bright meteor natures beauty but all engineered by something very magical .just wish this cloud would melt away while we still have enough hours of darkness .

[mesocyclone]

I've seen a lot in the last few years too Legritter, Work nights a lot and I'm driving in the early hours often, I had a dream a few years back being told to expect them..haha.

On another note I've asked a question as to what effect on the weather it would have. Any ideas? Anyone studied this before? I think it may have casued our coming cold spell rather like a SSW.

http://forum.netweather.tv/topic/76074-russian-meteorite-and-weather-patterns/

[Andy Bown]

Did anybody else see the Channel 4 documentary earlier in the week?

I watched it this afternoon and the footage of both the fireball and boom are astounding. However while most of the science seems sound

and extremely interesting, I got annoyed in the final part where the discussion went to creation/dinosaur extinction rather than the whole

programme focussing on this once in 100 year occurence.

[Bishop Brennan]

Did anybody else see the Channel 4 documentary earlier in the week?

I watched it this afternoon and the footage of both the fireball and boom are astounding. However while most of the science seems sound

and extremely interesting, I got annoyed in the final part where the discussion went to creation/dinosaur extinction rather than the whole

programme focussing on this once in 100 year occurence.

Yes, I caught it on 4oD the other day - lot's of fascinating unseen (by me, anyway) footage.

Bish

[swebby]

Found it?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24551407

 

S