[X] My Assistant

[volcanopele]

Looks like a small meteoroid decided to spoil 2012 DA14's big day by exploding over Russia...

http://zyalt.livejournal.com/722930.html?nojs=1

[Gladstoner]

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[Mongo]

Apparently, due to Russian laws pertaining to insurance claims, many cars in Russia have dashboard cams (do the Youtube search 'Russia dash cam' ). This means that many more videos of the bolide should be coming out in the days and weeks ahead.

I am waiting for a video that includes both the main flash and the arrival of the shock wave. That would allow us to estimate the distance and height above the ground of the detonation, and hence the minimum energy needed to cause at least 1 kPa of overpressure. I am betting it will be a figure in the low megaton range. A low kiloton-range explosion is already excluded in my opinion. The interval between explosion and shock wave hitting would have been too short, in the 20-30 second range, which I believe is already ruled out from the existing videos.

[ugordan]

The interval between explosion and shock wave hitting would have been too short, in the 20-30 second range, which I believe is already ruled out from the existing videos.

This video in particular shows a very long delay between start of filming and shock arrival, but it's obvious from the viewing angle that it's a ways off from the groundtrack so a minimum slant distance (here at least 23 km) is all we can infer. It does also show an unseen building smoking, perhaps it's the collapsed roof of the zinc factory. That amount of damage at that kind of range seems to support a high kiloton range. However, it's dangerous to infer too much from blast effects at these ranges as they start to depend upon meteorological conditions - inversion layers in the atmosphere, etc.

If the burst was at 20-ish km, I personally would place a bet at around 1 MT.

[ugordan]

This just in, via NASASpaceflight.com: a full length video from the flash to the sound. Whopping 2m 21 sec delay! Bolide starts at around 4:30 in the video.

This sucker was big!

[walfy]

It's amazing how today's trail resembles fairly well in some respects (thankfully, not all) the artist's visual approximation of the Tunguska event of 1908.



It would be interesting to see today's trail superimposed along a famous mountain chain, or city, to get an idea of its size. I would do it but I don't know how tall it is, or long.

Considering it's 30, 40? kilometers away in the above photo, it's a massive explosion high up there!