Image credit: YouTube/Евгений Славенков
Huge Meteor Blazes Across Sky Over Russia
Apparently, at about 09:30 local time, a very big meteor burned up over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia just east of the Ural mountains, and about 1500 kilometers east of Moscow. The fireball was incredibly bright, rivaling the Sun! There was a pretty big sonic boom from the fireball, which set off car alarms and shattered windows.
Phil Plait has posted a series of videos and photos in this piece. The sight of a meteorite trail is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I haven’t seen anything like this in my life.
First of all, I do not think this is related in any way to the asteroid 2102 DA14! For one thing, this occurred about 16 hours before DA14 passes. At 8 kilometers per second that’s nearly half a million kilometers away from DA14. That puts it on a totally different orbit.
This event just accentuates the fact that we Humans are grossly unequipped to handle the threats posed by NEOs.
You can find more reports, pictures and videos here.







