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Mercury has a moon? The Jovian-Plutonian Gravitational Effect will give you a floating feeling? The Space Station has an alien visitor? Virgin Galactic has bought Pluto and has plans for getting it reinstated as a planet? Nope. These are a examples of April Fool hoaxes and jokes.

Astronomy April Fools

"A New Constellation Takes Hold", read Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) on April 1, 2003. Ollie the Owl has suddenly started dominating the southern hemisphere. A bird was photographed taking the Tololo All Sky Camera (TASCA) as a perch. Given the unusual vantage point, one guess is that the bird is a Great Horned Owl.

Image credit: Hugo E. Schwarz (CTIO), NOAO

This is actually *not* an April Fool joke. The asteroid did fly by Earth in 2012 on April 1st. The graphic shows the orbit of asteroid 2012 EG5 (in blue) on that day.

I could just imagine NASA announcing that it was coming by, and being very tempted to add, "No, really."

April 1, 2004. CBBC (Children's BBC) announced that astronomers had decided to rename the planets in the Solar System after characters from the Lord of the Rings. The Earth would henceforth be known as Gandalf. Mars would become Frodo. Pluto would be known as Sauron, and even the Moon would receive a new name: Gollum.

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield holds up two objects that look like grenades as part of an April Fools' Day prank. (Credit: Canadian Space Agency/Chris Hadfield ) April 1, 2013.

(They're actual air sampling devices.)

Water On Mars. On March 31, 2005, APOD showed the next day's picture as “water on Mars . . .” which did leave people wondering. This was before orbiters and rovers had gathered so much evidence for water on the red planet.

April Fool!