Category: Astronomy

Fun Factivities: Daytime Darkness

In 1992, Kellogg’s was collaborating with World Book to deliver educational content to kids on cereal boxes. In addition to its popular encyclopedia (still in print and updated every year), World Book produced Childcraft, a 15-volume set about everything interesting to kids. Childcraft produced the cereal box content.

Figure 1. Six cereal boxes (ca. 1992) from a Kellogg’s Variety Pack. Each box has a World Book Childcraft “Fun `Factivity.'” These pristine boxes were for sale on eBay.

At the time, Kellogg’s Variety Packs included 10 (or sometimes 8?) single serving boxes of cereal. Each one had a Fun `Factivity’ on the back of the box (Figures 1 and 2). I don’t remember how I came across the box of Frosted Flakes below (Figure 3), but I still have it because I recognized the eclipse – the corona had the same shape as an eclipse I photographed 20 years earlier.

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A night sky to remember

Last week dozens of online photos of Comet NEOWISE enticed me to make an effort to see it for myself. At 9:00 PM on Friday I noticed that the sky was clear, threw some gear in a pack, and hiked up the hill behind the house. I sat in the grass in a big hilltop clearing as the sky darkened and first the comet, and then a million stars, and then the full sweep of the Milky Way emerged above me.

Comet NEOWISE. I like to think that this photo shows a hint of the separate ion tail to the left of the main dust tail, but I often think my photos are better than they really are. Nikkor 300mm 1:4.5 lens (ca. 1975) on Nikon D3100. ISO 800, f/8, 5 seconds. July 20, 2020, 11:22 PM EDT.
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