BIG UPDATE 16/2/13 11.45 CET - Estimates now place the russian meteor yesterday at 10,000 tons and 500 kt of energy http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-061

The wiki is being well maintained and I would recommend checking it out. Please read through this thread before posting any further questions - we're getting a huge number of repeats.

UPDATE 15/2/13 17.00 CET Estimates have come in suggesting rather than 10 tons and 2 m³ the Chelyabinsk meteor was 15 m in diameter, weighting in at 7000 tons. First contact with the atmosphere was at 18km s^-1 . These are preliminary estimates, but vastly alter many of the answer below. Please keep this in mind

For those interested in observing meteorites, the next guaranteed opportunity to see a shower is the Lyrids, around the 22nd April. The Perseids around 12th August will be even better. We also have a comet later this year in the form of ISON. To see any of these from where you are check out http://www.heavens-above.com/ There's obviously plenty of other resources too, such as http://www.astronomy.com/News-Observing.aspx

As well as the DA14 flyby later today, we've been treated to some exceptional footage of a meteor passing through our atmosphere over Russia early this morning. In order to keep the deluge of interest and questions in an easily monitored and centralised place for everyones convenience, we have set up this central thread.

For information about those events, and links to videos and images, please first have a look here:

Russian meteorite:

• http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2013/02142336-breaking-meteor-fall-causes.html
• http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/02/15/breaking_huge_meteor_explodes_over_russia.html
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21468116
• http://lithics.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/meteorite-madness/

DA14

*Live chat with a American Museum of Natural History Curator*

• How to spot it from where you are
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_DA14
• http://news.discovery.com/space/astronomy/astronomy-asteroid-2012-da14-flyby-tips-130215.htm

Questions already answered:

• Are the two events today related?
• What is the trail left behind a meteor?
• Why do meteors burn up?

If you would like to know what the effects of a particular impact might be, I highly recommend having a play around with this tool here: http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/)

Failing all that, if you still have a question you would like answered, please post your question in this thread as a top level comment.

usual AskScience rules apply. Many thanks for your co-operation