Some of you will have been listening to media reports on the news this morning.

It is perhaps a reflection on the BBC that they often just parrot what they have been told, sometimes by professional astronomers, without checking the facts.  This morning's news about 2022 E3 (ZTF) has rather a large number of inaccuracies.

The comet can be seen in the early evening, so you don't have to stay up after midnight.  Even if you do, the moon is only just setting as dawn breaks.  The fact that moonlight will make viewing the comet harder wasn't mentioned.  I observed it in 8x40 binoculars yesterday evening and it was pretty obvious if you knew what to look for and where it was.  I don't see it as anything like a classical broom-star, so suggesting that it might have an obvious tail is unwise.

To the casual observer it won't be dashing across the sky, although due to its close approach it is moving more quickly than most and this should be easy to see when viewed for five or ten minutes through a telescope.

It is not newly discovered - it was found last March and has been under observation ever since.  It is not unusually green - most brighter comets will show a green coma.

The comet will be below and to the left of the Pole tomorrow morning, though the report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-64388483 suggests looking to the right.

Someone seems to have decided that the point of closest approach is the time to issue a press release, when in fact it has been readily observable over the last week and will be for another week.

The problem is of course that when you know about something you can spot the errors, but these may not be so obvious in stories where you are not familiar with the facts.  It does make you wonder what other mis-information is being published.

Regards,

Jonathan Shanklin
BAA Comet Section visual observations co-ordinator
https://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~jds/

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