Life Verse:

"...I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly." -- JESUS in John 10:10

Friday, February 15, 2013

Celestially Curious Circumstances

Meteorite/Fireball over the Ural Mountains in Russia in the morning!
Another possible meteorite/fireball over Cuba a little later...
Asteroid 2012 DA14 is set to make a modern record-making close approach to earth at 1:24CST today. 

NASA had this to say about the Fireball over Russia...

February 15, 2013

Preliminary information indicates that a fireball in Chelyabinsk, Russia, is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14, which is flying by Earth safely today.



The Russian fireball is the largest reported since 1908, when a fireball hit Tunguska, Siberia. The fireball entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.



Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the fireball over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.



The fireball, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, was brighter than the sun. Its trail was visible for about 30 seconds, so it was a grazing impact through the atmosphere.



It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.


Two meteorite/fireballs on the same day as a large asteroid close-encounter... somehow that is too much of a coincidence to me.

No comments: