A catalog of video records of the 2013 Chelyabinsk superbolide
Introductory comment:
At last Nikita Loskutov’s excellent work in documenting the videos of the fall since 2013 has been acknowledged! I do welcome the publication of this paper and the online database very much! It is a very important project which was long overdue! Nevertheless, correct me please if I’m wrong but the data about the exact locations of the video recordings published in the catalog seem to be based to a great extent on the work Loskutov has done since 2013. If this is in fact the case, to me he is more than a ‘team member’ and his precious contribution could have been emphasized in the text. Until July 19, 2015 Loskutov had already published a detailed catalog (as xls, doc and kmz files) with the exact locations of 673 videos on his Russian vk.com website. Again, please do correct me if I’m wrong!
Спасибо вам большое за отличную работу, Никита Лоскутов !
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A catalog of video records of the 2013 Chelyabinsk superbolide
Borovička, J.; Shrbený, L.; Kalenda, P.; Loskutov, N.; Brown, P.; Spurný, P.; Cooke, W.; Blaauw, R.; Moser, D. E.; Kingery, A.
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Vol. 585 (2016), A90 (DOI: 10.1051/0004-6361/201526680)
Published online: 23 December 2015
PDF (open access)
Online version of catalog
“The Chelyabinsk superbolide of February 15, 2013, was caused by the atmospheric entry of a ~19 m asteroid with a kinetic energy of 500 kT TNT just south of the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. It was a rare event; impacts of similar energy occur on the Earth only a few times per century. Impacts of this energy near such a large urban area are expected only a few times per 10 000 years. A number of video records obtained by casual eyewitnesses, dashboard cameras in cars, security, and traffic cameras were made publicly available by their authors on the Internet. These represent a rich repository for future scientific studies of this unique event. To aid researchers in the archival study of this airburst, we provide and document a catalog of 960 videos showing various aspects of the event. Among the video records are 400 distinct videos showing the bolide itself and 108 videos showing the illumination caused by the bolide. Other videos show the dust trail left in the atmosphere, the arrival of the blast wave on the ground, or the damage caused by the blast wave. As these video recordings have high scientific, historical, and archival value for future studies of this airburst, a systematic documentation and description of records is desirable. Many have already been used for scientific analyses. We give the exact locations where 715 videos were taken as well as details of the visible/audible phenomena in each video recording. An online version of the published catalog has been developed and will be regularly updated to provide a long–term database for investigators.”
