Awesome Fireball Event in central Russia

2012 DA14 may not be on a collision course with Earth later today but a smaller asteroid was. A major fireball (and most likely also a meteorite dropping event) occurred over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. Chelyabinsk is a city of 1+ million people located just to the East of the Ural Mountains and just north of the Russia-Kazakhstan border.

The fireball that occurred there this morning appeared brighter than the Sun and produced a sonic boom that shattered windows causing flying glass-induced injuries to hundreds of people. A large building in town also seems to have been damaged. Though it is still uncertain if this was due to a large meteorite or the sonic boom.

An event like this happening only hours before the close flyby of the ~45-meter in diameter asteroid 2012 DA14, begs the question of whether the two are linked. It is probably unlikely that the Chelyabinsk fireball and 2012 DA14 are related. Luckily there are so many great videos of the fireball that an accurate orbit for the asteroid that caused the fireball should be easily determined.

[Update: 2012 DA14 and the Russian fireball can not be related. The radiant (the region of the sky that a DA14 or a piece of DA14 would appear to come from) of DA14 is at the very far southern declination of -81 degrees. This is the reason why DA14 is only visible from the southern hemisphere as it approaches Earth. A radiant that far south could not produce a fireball over Russia which is in the northern hemisphere. Any pieces of DA14 would only be able to impact Earth over the southern hemisphere or a few degrees north of the Equator. The fact that the Russian fireball and the 2012 DA14 close approach are happening on the same day is just a coincidence.]

Up-to-date information can be found at RT, here and here, and RMNB.

Many videos have been posted. The first 2 show the fireball itself. The last 2 are videos of the resulting contrail. What is very impressive about the last two is that the videos also caught the sonic boom. In one of the videos you can hear glass shattering in the background. Simply awesome…