Russian Meteor
Asteroid 2012 DA14
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| Courtesy: NASA/MSFC/Aaron Kingery |
Friday, February 15, 2013
Asteroids and Meteors!
While the weather was quiet on Friday, the skies above the Earth's atmosphere were anything but. Here's a recap.
Russian Meteor
The first big space story of our Friday took place in Chelyabinsk, Russia. A meteor the size of a school bus entered the atmosphere at about 40,000mph, creating a massive sonic boom that injured about 1,100 people. It also gave us a pretty impressive light show. In fact, the meteor shone brighter than the sun at one point. More video of the meteor can be found below:
Asteroid 2012 DA14
The other big story of the day was Asteroid 2012 DA14 passing within 17,500 miles of the surface of the Earth. The asteroid is the size of half a football field. This is the closest an object of this size has come to hitting the earth. The photo to the left shows the asteroid (highlighted in the box) with the Eta Carinae Nebula as a backdrop.
Russian Meteor
Asteroid 2012 DA14
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What does this have to do with weather?
ReplyDeleteTrue, this isn't directly related to the weather, but a lot of people find this kind of thing interesting and we get questions about it.
ReplyDeleteI support this kind of material because we as a people need to understand that we need to pay attention to more than just surface related weather phenomenon. If this thing were to hit us, it would not be pretty.
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