Thanks to the ubiquitous dashboard cameras in Russia, we were treated to a number of amazing views of the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk back on February 15. And thanks to one of the instruments aboard the Suomi NPP weather satellite launched by NASA in the fall of 2011, we can now enjoy a view of the microscopic rubble it left behind, which drifted through the stratosphere for more than three months.

That instrument is the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS), which, obviously, is designed to measure atmospheric ozone. It also monitors aerosols in the stratosphere, enabling it to detect the dust from the Chelyabinsk meteor.

When the 18-meter-wide (roughly 60 feet) meteor exploded, it was about 23 kilometers (roughly 14 miles) above the surface. The heavier bits fell to the Earth, but the dust rose to heights of up to 45 kilometers (nearly 28 miles). Although that represents a heck of a lot less material than is ejected by an erupting volcano, like the mouth-exercising Eyjafjallajökull, it still got dragged around by the circulating atmosphere. After four days, the Suomi sensors had watched that dust plume wrap all the way around the Earth.

Eventually, it smeared into a single, 400-kilometer-wide (nearly 250 mile) belt at an altitude of about 35 kilometers (roughly 22 miles). The satellite watched it persist there for months, slowly settling downward about 90 meters (roughly 295 feet) each day.

Since Suomi only takes snapshots of the belt as it passes by (orbiting from pole to pole, as it does), researchers simulated the plume using a pair of atmospheric models, which matched those snapshots nicely. One model is used specifically for ash plumes from volcanic eruptions, and the other has a broader bailiwick but handles aerosols nicely. You can see some of the results for yourself in the video below.



Other than being pretty cool, what’s the value of this? Well, while we (thankfully) don’t see many meteors this size, the Earth is constantly pelted by very small meteors that deposit dust high in the atmosphere. That dust can provide condensation nuclei for high-level clouds—an interaction Suomi’s sensor could help researchers better understand. Suomi may even be able to detect small meteors that we wouldn’t notice otherwise by finding the puffs of dust that mark their violent end. And, without the satellite’s eye on the sky, we wouldn’t know much about the airborne portion of the Chelyabinsk meteor’s remains.

Geophysical Research Letters, 2013. DOI: 10.1002/grl.50788 (About DOIs).