Epic Fireball Over Russia - 2013-02-15
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 = February 15, 2013 | accessdate = January 14, 2017 }}