g1smd - 1:08 am on Feb 19, 2013 (gmt 0)

Yeah, I tend to agree.

2012 DA 14 is certainly an asteroid. That's the one that missed us by ~25 000 km. It's about 50 metres across and 150 000 tons. It was an "Apollo" class object, but it's now an "Aten" class, as the Earth's gravity modified the asteroids orbit.

The Russian object was one-third of that diameter, i.e. about 17 metres diameter, and 10 000 tons. This was a "small asteroid".

Some UK newspapers are calling it a meteor shower. It certainly wasn't that; only one object entered the atmosphere.

Most of the world's media are saying the Russian object was 10 tons. It was 10 000 tons.

I have tagged some of the videos as "end point". In those you're looking back up the 100+ km long "tube" from a point close to the impact point of whatever survived the fiery passage through the atmosphere. I'm guessing that most of the people that took the pictures are blissfully unaware they were the target of the rock travelling directly at them at 18 km/sec.

Not all asteroids are in the asteroid belt. A great many have been nudged into other orbits over the years. A few thousand come near the Earth's orbit at some point in their own orbit. That's only a problem if the Earth is in the same place as the asteroid when the asteroid intersects the Earth's orbit.