The full moon on Wednesday, April 20, will not be green, despite several hoax reports making their way through social media.
Maybe you noticed the incorrect day and date relationship in that first sentence. It’s not a mistake. In 2016, when we first debunked the green-moon social-media hoax, April 20 was a Wednesday.
This year, April 20 is a Friday. That’s different, but just as in 2016, there will not be a green moon on April 20, 2018.
Also, as in 2016, those social-media sharers have missed the fact that the full moon this month is April 30, a Monday.
Bottom line: No green full moon on April 20, this year or anywhere.
It all started as a joke posted to a few Facebook friends in April 2016. It then escalated into a full-blown hoax, shared across social media by people who made no effort to check out even the most basic details of the thing.
The hoaxers apparently went with April 20, which might also be referred to as 4-20, to include a street reference for marijuana in their joke.
Then, one of the original hoaxers eventually went on to support his original, simple meme of a green-tinted moon with an elaborate, but totally false, explanation involving the alignment of the moon with Uranus. Even that alignment won’t happen.
That same fakery is being spread again this year.
In 2016, another version of the hoax moved the green moon to Friday, May 29, but that moon also will not be green nor a full moon. Expect the hoax to continue in a similar vein this year, but remember there will not be a green moon.
Some of the original hoaxes, which apparently were first posted on personal Facebook pages, used digitally tinted versions of a NASA photo of a normal full moon like the one accompanying this article. If you see an image of a green moon this year, now you’ll know you’re being hoaxed.
