Epic Fireball Over Russia - 2013-02-15
Epic Fireball Over Russia February 15, 2013,
Our thanks to Phil Plait, who alerted us to this on Twitter. Several amazing videos are coming in from the Ural Mountains region of Russia, where a meteor provided an incredible show about an hour ago (midnight Eastern time), near the city of Chelyabinsk.
Plait (of Bad Astronomer fame) guesses that this object is unrelated to 2012DA14, a 50-meter asteroid that is passing very close to the Earth in several more hours.
So far, the only reporting on this we've seen is a Reuters report mistakenly labeling this a "meteor shower." This is clearly not a shower but a single object, a meteor, which looks like it broke up, producing parallel trails as it burned up in a spectacular daytime fireball.
{{cite news | author = Tony Ortega | title = Epic Fireball Over Russia | url = http://tonyortega.org/2013/02/15/epic-fireball-over-russia/ | work = Underground Bunker | date = 2013-02-15 | accessdate = 2014-10-13 }}