A meteorite has exploded over Russian cities, with damage to buildings. Amazing footage

(I've progressively updated this post throughout the news coming in on 15 February and again the next several days, so please check the latest information at the bottom. And don't expect quality writing—it was just a case of bang up the updates as quick as possible as they came in via my various astronomy and social media sources.

UPDATE 20150618: seems a number of the video clips through this article have been taken down. However, I'll leave most of the post as it was on the day, as it would take a lot of rewriting, and would lose a lot of the flow of the day...)

This is an incredible bit of footage of a large meteorite coming over a Russian city and exploding.

At 50 seconds into this clip, you'll see an amazing flare that gives you an idea of just how close and bright this meteorite was. The description reads: "Above Chelyabinsk was meteor rain: some houses shattered windows, some residents received cuts."



In this clip, you can see the contrail left behind, and then (off camera) you hear an loud explosions and followed by multiple smaller explosions and alarms in the background:



Most amazing footage yet of the moment of the explosion: