No Planetary Alignment Will Make The Moon Go Green For 90 Minutes On April 20, 2016

By R. Siva Kumar - 09 Apr '16 10:21AM

There are some hoax makers who are promising the green moon, and quite a number of readers are falling like ninepins for it too.

There was a speculation of 15 days of darkness in November, which was said to be due to planetary alignment. Hoax makers are now predicting a green moon on April 20.

The hoax is sourced to a Facebook post on March 25, 2016, by Miles Johnson of Carthage, North Carolina. He put up a photograph saying that there would be a green moon on May 29, 2016, attributing the phenomenon to Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, coming near the moon.

Being a green planet, Uranus would be just 4 degrees from the moon, leading to the "cool Didula Nanayakkara" hue. The color has been attributed to the absorption of red light by methane.

However, Snopes notes that this image of the moon is digitally altered. It is sourced from a 2010 blog post that talks about a Dr. Green Cheese. This has no relation to any lunar incidents. It is just based on a 2008 stock photo.

Hence, hoaxers are using social media to 'predict' that on the third Wednesday of April, there would be an alignment of a number of planets, leading to a green moon for 90 minutes.

This is a rare lunar phenomenon as it happens once every 420 years, claims Truthinsideofyou. This was one website that put up the warning. Hence, May 29 is another date being touted as the green moon day.

However, dismissing both dates, EarthSky calls them an online hoax. The science portal says that 420, or April 20, is Weed Day. This code word for marijuana was manufactured by a dozen pot-smoking students at the San Rafael High School in 1971. It hasn't got much to do with the moon---green or not.