I know from my own professional career before I retired that the media rarely seems to gets it right when you are in possession of the actual facts of a matter.

I was equally horrified when an academic with supposed expertise in astronomy appeared on the BBC recently to claim that viewers that night would have the opportunity to see approximately 120 meteors an hour during the Leonid meteor shower.  As we all know, even IF there were that many in an hour, a large proportion wouldn't be bright enough to see with the naked eye (even from a dark sky with no Moon) and then there is the not inconsiderable matter of humanity not being blessed with 360 degree vision and therefore only able to observe a proportion of the night sky at any given moment when a bright meteor might appear.

It is a salutatory reminder to all of us  to take any media coverage of a scientific matter with which we are less familiar with as large a pinch of salt as is needed for matters where we are acquainted with the known facts!

Peter T

-----Original Message-----
From: baa-comet@simplelists.com [mailto:baa-comet@simplelists.com]
Sent: 01 February 2023 10:02
To: baa-comet@simplelists.com
Subject: [BAA Comets] BBC comet news

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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