Astronomers Track the Origin of Russian Meteor

Astronomers from the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, have traced the origin of the meteorite that fell in Central Russia and Urals regions injuring over a thousand people earlier this month.

They have reconstructed the orbit in order to determine the origin of the huge fireball that exploded about 20-14 km above the Earth's surface.

Security cameras and several dashboards served as a resource to researchers Jorge Zuluga and Ignacio Ferrin. They used trajectories posted on YouTube in order to track the meteors' trajectory through the Earth's surface and reconstruct the orbit in space.

"We are working hard to produce an updated and more precise reconstruction of the orbit using different pieces of evidence," Zuluga told Universe Today via email.

Two videos were used for the study: one from the camera that was located in the Revolutionary Square in Chelyabinsk, and another video from the nearby city of Korkino. They even considered the frozen lake in Chebarkul where the meteorite crashed.

With the help of simple trigonometry, they calculated the height, speed and position of the rock as it fell to the Earth.

According to BBC, six different parameters were used to reconstruct the meteor's original orbit around the sun. Most of the parameters were linked to a point where the meteor becomes very bright and casts a noticeable shadow at the brightening points along the latitude and longitude.

The estimation states that the meteor brightened up when it was 32-47 km above the Earth's atmosphere. And the velocity was between 13-19 km/s.

With the help of the software developed by the U.S. Naval Observatory 'NOVAS', they verified their calculations and state that the rock originated from the Apollo class of asteroids. These rocks are known to cross Earth's orbit.

The researchers plan on determining why this space rock was not detected and also plan on making a calculation by eliminating the Lake Chebarkul from one of the triangulation points.

Click HERE for the research papers.