Freddie Mercury honored in space: Long live giant, flying, interplanetary rock!
Also in Tattle: Weekend box office, Miss America, Jim Gardner, police stories
IN THE cartoon classic,
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
, our trick-or-treating hero gets a rock (womp-womp) in his candy bag.
It is not meant to be a treat.
The late, great Freddie Mercury got a sort of a big rock yesterday for what would have been his 70th birthday and it was quite the treat.
The celestial singer, who's now in the lap of the gods, and was once one of the princes of the universe, was honored by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which renamed Asteroid 17473 as Freddiemercury, according to brianmay.com, the website of the astrophysicist and Queen guitarist.
The asteroid was discovered in 1991, the year of Freddie's death.
Where is Freddie's asteroid?
May writes that "It's in the main Asteroid Belt, out between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and is about 3 and a half km across. It has an albedo of about 0.3 - which means it only reflects about 30 per cent of the light that falls on it; like many asteroids, it's a dark object - rather like a cinder in space. Viewed from the Earth it is more than 10,000 times fainter than you can see by eye, so you need a fair-sized telescope to see it . . . and that's why it wasn't discovered until 1991."
In issuing the Certificate of Designation, Joel Parker of the Southwest Research Institute said:
"Even if you can't see Freddiemercury leaping through the sky, you can be sure he's there - 'floating around in ecstasy', as he might sing - for millennia to come."
'Don't Breathe," again
The horror thriller
Don't Breathe
topped the box office for the second straight week, while several new releases couldn't catch their breath.
The Sony Screen Gems release made an estimated $15.7 million in its second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. The R-rated Don't Breathe, about an ill-considered home invasion of a blind man, is on pace to make $19.4 million over the four-day holiday weekend. Produced for just $10 million, the film has made $51.1 million in total.
Its success spelled doom for the other horror film trying to gain a foothold: Morgan, a low-budget sci-fi thriller directed by Ridley Scott's son, Luke Scott. Opening on more than 2,000 screens, it bombed with just $2 million.
Also torpedoed was the Robert De Niro-Edgar Ramirez boxing drama Hands of Stone, about Panamanian boxer Robert Duran. It made just $1.3 million while expanding to 2,011 theaters.
The drama The Light Between the Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, debuted with a modest $5 million a day after it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. The period film, directed by Derek Cianfrance, stars the real-life couple as newlyweds living at a remote Australian lighthouse. Its budget was about $20 million.
The poor performing new releases enabled Suicide Squad to hold second place at the box office with $10 million. Despite rough reviews, the supervillain team-up film has shown decent legs in theaters, making nearly $300 million domestically.
TATTBITS
* A former Miss America pageant winner has scored another honor.
The Miss America Foundation announced Monday that Katie Harman Ebner has been named the inaugural recipient of its new Former Miss America Discretionary Scholarship.
The scholarship was established to help former pageant winners who still need financial assistance in completing their education after their 10-year scholarship window expires.
Ebner was Miss America 2002. She will receive up to $10,000 in scholarship assistance to continue her studies at Southern Oregon University's renowned Oregon Center for the Arts.
The next Miss America will be crowned Sunday in Atlantic City's Boardwalk Hall.
* But our top story: Jim Gardner will be returning to Action News tonight (Tuesday) following surgery.
* And to close out today's scientific Tattle, Isaac Newton's Third Law of Police Physics:
According to the Daily Beast, New York police are seeking the person who defaced a Justin Bieber sand sculpture.
According to ABC News, Los Angeles police have located the woman body-shamed by Playboy model Dani Mathers on Snapchat.
- Daily News wire services
contributed to this report.
215-854-5678 @DNTattle
- Tattle will be on assignment
for the next week.