The Ison comet.

Even this morning, once again (I lost count), I read on the main newspapers a series of colossal blunders on the Ison comet. It is an event almost non-existent, for (many) months incomprehensibly pumped by journalists.

Already many months ago, the newspapers, literally and categorically, stated that "from 28 November (2013), the Ison comet will be visible to the naked eye " and will have "a brightness of 15 times higher than that of the full Moon, and 100 times that of Venus". Practically, it is as if they said that Ison would reach a brightness far superior even to that of a Supernova (observable, from Earth, with the naked eye, every 1.000 years or so...) and, on this basis, have wrote repeatedly of "event of the century" (then, not at random). 

Even today, all the newspapers keep talking of brightness, basing, on this, predictions of an event of the century (at least!).

But I say: exist a journalist (that both one!) that includes and explains that the "brightness" to which they relate astronomers is, of course, the "relative magnitude" (that is, the brightness which would be if, in the case of species, the Moon, Venus and Ison were at the same distance from the observer terrestrial) and not the "absolute magnitude"?

Stuff to take them with a stick on the gums! Even the scientific information in the hands of the ignorants...

http://www.cometison2013.co.uk/perihelion-and-distance/