Russian meteor most likely came from asteroid belt
FEB 26, 2013
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.026798
BBC : Astronomers have been studying video footage to calculate the origin of the meteor that struck Russia on 15 February. From images captured by car-dashboard cameras, camera phones, and CCTV, Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin of the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, were able to determine the trajectory of the meteor in Earth’s atmosphere and then use that calculation to reconstruct its orbit in space prior to entering the atmosphere. According to their findings , which have been published on the arXiv e-print server, the meteor belongs to the Apollo class of asteroids, a group of near-Earth asteroids whose elliptical orbit crosses that of Earth and can come near enough to the planet to pose a threat. The Chelyabinsk meteor appears to have originated in our solar system, most likely in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
© 2013 American Institute of Physics
