Watch out Chuck. Agreeing with me puts you in pretty rare company. :) But seriously, I mentioned Kohoutek on purpose. I was going to flight school in Tulsa back when Kohoutek came around and remember all too well the hype the comet's approach generated. Even Johnny Carson got involved. Well, many of us know what happened. Following huge "Comet of the Century" build up hype and then the comet barely made it to naked eye visibility. Fast forward a couple of years. It was March of 1976 and I was brand new at Hansen. We'd heard there was a comet called West approaching but the astronomical community was still licking its wounds from Kohoutek so very little was said to the media/public. Then one morning I got a call from a guy who claimed to have been out that morning and had seen a huge comet in the east. Remember, this was before the internet so I had no way to check his story and, frankly, he sounded so crazy I doubted his story. But I promised to go have a look the next morning. I did as promised and the next morning I drove up to SLAS's old observing site on Little Mountain. And I could not believe my eyes. It was incredible! When the coma rose it was like the glow of an about-to-rise Moon. I raced back down the mountain (no cell phones then) and found a phone and called then planetarium director Dr. Mark Litmann. Woke him up as I remember. Told him what I'd just seen and got his ok to contact media. I'd never spoken to media about astronomy before so they had no idea who I was. So between my being unknown to them and my trying to tell them about the comet not long after they'd been burned on Kohoutek and it took days before local and even national media said much about it. And, by then of course, West was already fading rapidly. One of the best comets of the 20th century and few people saw it. In fact, I know of a SLAS member or two (who may announce themselves if they wish but I wont mention names <g>) who were active amateur astronomers at the time but never saw West. So, yes Chuck, let's keep the hype under control. patrick On 24 Dec 2008, at 20:32, Chuck Hards wrote:
This is good advice for anyone who has more than a passing interest in astronomy. But I agree with Patrick in that publicizing very minor astronomical events can have the "cry wolf" effect with the general public. Most casual newspaper readers (or blog readers in this case) are probably not going to perform a Web search after reading an article. They will read "eclipse tonight" and the rest of the technicalities won't register. Seeing nothing unusual (in the case of a shallow penumbral eclipse), they will probably dismiss such articles in the future. Most of the readership will in fact only get out a couple of times in their lives.
Nobody's talking about only publicizing "great" events, Daniel, but events that can't be distinguished from a non-event, or won't even be visible for most of the readership (Utah may be in daylight when it happens, or night-time if it's a solar event), can have a negative effect on readership. Ultimately it's that ability to sell the paper that will keep the blog running, not a warm fuzzy feeling of educating the masses.