Brent Watson wrote:
I would also like to state that "experiences" like this do a bunch to KILL interest in astronomy.
Brent is 100% correct on this one. SLAS and I worked to put the lid on this story with two releases to Utah media cautioning that the comet would not be visible without a large telescope. Further, the Wallop Watch at SPOC was billed as a private event and was not advertised to the public. Despite this I still had calls from two reporters (Joe Bauman was NOT one of them) wanting to know where to tell folks to look. Very exasperating. And it did not help that at least one mission scientist postulated on NASA TV that the event might be visible to just the eye from country locations. I think we were lucky that the event happened during a major holiday. Had it happened on a slow news day there probably would have been a lot more (inaccurate, IMHO) coverage. Patrick