[meteorite-list] Meteoric Education For Meteorologists?

[Chris Peterson]

Ryan-

On the whole, the meteorologists and other reporters here in Colorado do 
a fairly reasonable job with meteor reports these days. The Fox 31 
report you mentioned was unusually bad, although I was impressed that 
the reporter had actually determined so early in the day that there was 
an active (and not very well known) meteor shower the previous night.

When we first started our camera network in the state, fireball reports 
on the news were almost uniformly poor. Meteors might be called comets, 
the reporters would tell people to look for meteorites in their yards, 
all sorts of bad stuff. Then we had a series of high profile fireballs, 
and we had the opportunity to educate the meteorologists. Jack Murphy 
and I did lots of interviews, most on-air, and met most of the 
meteorologists and science reporters. I put up an informational website. 
The end result of all this is that most of these reporters are pretty 
sharp now on the subject, and they usually call me for information very 
soon after an event.

As a specialist, I'd love it if the science reporters could get 
everything perfect. But realistically, this isn't something they report 
on very often, so I'm happy that most of them now get the basics 
correct- they know what causes meteors, they know generally how big and 
how distant they are, and they know what meteorites are. For the most 
part they get the terminology correct, too.

If you want to challenge anybody's education, it should be professional 
astronomers! Just about every time there is a big fireball somewhere in 
the world, the local press goes to a "local astronomer" for information, 
and it's almost always bad. Meteors and meteoritics are very specialized 
areas that few professional astronomers know much about, and the 
misinformation that is often promulgated can be very disappointing to 
read. You can't blame the science reporter to much when his "expert" 
source gets it wrong.

Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "RYAN PAWELSKI" <yellowengine at earthlink.net>
To: <meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 3:13 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteoric Education For Meteorologists?


>I was just browsing some videos of this mornings spectacular show over 
>Denver on Fox 31, and im actually a bit surprised at the lack of 
>knowledge by the majority of the general public, especially 
>meteorologists, who oftentimes do have some degree of 
>astronomy/meteoric education. It seems the news team had come to an 
>early conclusion that this was somehow part of the Quadrantids meteor 
>shower (??). Now only if it were true... imagine what a great show the 
>Perseids would be!! haha
>
>
> Ryan