Meteorite reportedly crashes in West Siberia (Video)

A meteor exploded in the sky over Khakassia in southern Siberia, early Tuesday morning, briefly turning the dark morning sky as bright as daylight, reports the Siberian Times.

In the footage released on Tuesday, the meteor can be seen flying over the town of Sayanogorsk. According to local authorities parts of it landed in the nearby valley of Babik.

Some people even managed to catch the event on camera, on car-mounted dash-cams, as they were heading home from work.

“Obviously, the meteorite wasn’t big. Judging by the fact that it burned up or exploded before reaching surface, it’s obvious that it can hardly be more than 10 or 15 meters in size and that apparently it is not made of iron,” head scientist of Space Research Institute (IKI) of Russian Academy of Sciences Natan Eismont said.

A member of the meteorites committee under the Russian Academy of Sciences, Viktor Grokhovsky, told TASS that the meteorite that probably exploded above Khakassia could be far less in size than the one that crashed into Lake Chebarkul, near Chelyabinsk, in February 2013.

Agencies/Canadajournal