As people heading to work in the city of Chelyabinsk, a meteor streaked across the sky traveling over 19 miles a second, then exploding in a tremendous blast that injured over 500 people on the ground.

The meteor, several yards across, that had a long white trail behind it could be seen for over 125 miles around. Then, as it traversed the sky at an altitude of over 10,000 feet, over the thinly populated region near the Ural mountains, it exploded, sending burning fireballs towards the earth. Over five hundred people were injured and sought hospital services. A majority of the injuries sustained were from flying glass as the explosion shattered windows and damaged over one hundred buildings in the central Russian city.

The incident occurred at 9:20 am at the site of the explosion. The blast brightened the twilight sky of morning as 300 buildings sustained damage in the celestial explosion. Six hospitals and 12 schools were among that number.

A huge piece of the space rock thought to be a part of the meteor has been recovered from a lake in the region. Russian scientists are estimating the original size of the object before it exploded at about 10,000 tons.

Although this incident occurred very close to the time that asteroid 2012 DA14 was set to pass near earth, scientists say that the two are not related. They cite the trajectory of the meteor as vastly different than DA14’s trajectory that will be generally south to north.

The European Space Aency and European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites Meteo-9 picked up and recorded images of the meteor as it streaked overhead in Russian airspace.