We might, I said, depart significantly from the straight and narrow. In my first meeting with the class, I went over the syllabus, discussed the news-driven concept, and indicated that I was still unsure about the idea. The next day, the blazing bolide set the stage and pushed me on it. Normally I would cover the topic of meteors last in the semester, in keeping with the sequence of the textbook. Yet there is no reason to delay the discussion.
Meteors are a stand-alone topic, requiring a minimum of background.
So, it was simple to start with that material. I then decided to complete that chapter by springboarding off the discovery of Comet Hale-Bopp into a discussion of comets. Indeed, the announcement of its potential brightening arrived at just the right time. The awarding of the Nobel prize for the discovery of the ozone hole aided a discussion of light and Earth's atmospheric transparency. The discovery of the planet around 51 Pegasi provided an application of Kepler's laws.