On February 14, 2013 residents of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk were rocked by a
fireball air burst almost as powerful as the legendary
Tunguska Event. A small asteroid estimated to be over 10,000 metric tonnes entered the atmosphere from the daylight side of the planet at a very shallow angle and exploded at an altitude of 79,000 feet, raining fragments of material over a wide area.
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| Photo: Alex Alishevskikh via Wikimedia Commons |
Residents who came out to see the amazing trains of vaporized material hanging in the sky were taken by surprise by a series of powerful sonic booms that blew out windows and caused wide spread damage to buildings in the Chelyabinsk area a little over three minutes after the fireball burned up in the atmosphere. If the object had entered the atmosphere at a steeper angle the damage would have been catastrophic. Thanks to Russian's wide use of dash mounted video cameras, this incredible event was captured by many different people from many different vantage points, which will help astronomers determine the exact trajectory of this object as it ripped through the sky.
Here are a couple of the many amazing videos that were uploaded to YouTube moments after this historic event:
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