Moon’d!
As many of you may have already heard, the Mooninites invaded Boston today. Cartoon Network decided to promote the new season of Aqua Teen Hunger Force by planting electronic Mooninite lightboards in boxes in hot spots around the city.
Federal, state and local police swarmed around the city as reports poured in of suspicious devices, closing roads, tunnels and bridges for hours. The chaos touched off a traffic nightmare and prompted a tense press conference from Gov. Deval Patrick and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who assured residents the matter was under control.
[via The Boston Herald]
Turner Broadcasting, parent company of Time Warner, issued an apology:
The ”packages” in question are magnetic lights that pose no danger. They are part of an outdoor marketing campaign in 10 cities in support of Adult Swim’s animated television show Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They have been in place for two to three weeks in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Parent company Turner Broadcasting is in contact with local and federal law enforcement on the exact locations of the billboards. We regret that they were mistakenly thought to pose any danger.
Shirley Powell
SVP, Corporate Communications
The packages in question have since all been destroyed by the Boston Bomb Squad.
But wait, there is more moon related news!
Tonight there is a ring around the moon unlike any I have ever seen before. This isn’t your typical ring. It’s not very close to the moon, at least from the ground view. It’s distant and bright and beautiful and creepy. It’s kind of like a halo. But it surely can’t be a legitimate halo. A halo would never appear over our pathetic, dying planet.
I tried to take a picture but it came out like crap. So here’s a picture of a lunar halo from 1998.
This is a “ring around the moon” or lunar halo. Vastly overexposed in this 8 second exposure, in the center of the frame, is the moon.
Halos are caused by sunlight being refracted by cirro-stratus clouds. In the case of this lunar halo, the sunlight was first reflected off the gibbous moon, which was three days past full. Cirro-stratus clouds are thin clouds, very high in the atmosphere, and are composed of ice crystals. They bend light at a 22 degree angle, which creates a solar halo or lunar halo that is 44 degrees in diameter.
[via astropix.com]
Maybe it’s a sign from the Mooninites….