See the Full Beaver Moon on Friday, the Last Dazzling Supermoon of 2024

From today through early Sunday, take a look up—though you’ve likely heard a lot about supermoons over the last few months, this weekend will be your last chance to see one until next fall.

The exact moment of the supermoon is 4:29 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, November 15, but it will appear to be full from early Thursday morning through just before sunrise on Sunday, according to NASA’s Gordon Johnston.

This year’s supermoon saga began in August, and each month since, Earth has been treated to an especially dazzling view of its natural satellite.

Every month in the sequence so far has presented the supermoon alongside another, often rare, lunar occurrence. In August, for instance, sky watchers witnessed a super blue moon—a supermoon that also happened to be the third of four full moons this summer. September’s supermoon was also a partial lunar eclipse, and October’s was the closest and brightest supermoon of the year.

This month’s show is special in its finality, closing out the lunar quartet. It’s slightly brighter and closer than August’s supermoon, which started off the streak. The next supermoon after this one won’t be until October 2025.

This is your last chance to see a Supermoon this year!

The next full Moon will occur on Nov. 15, starting at 4:29 p.m. EST. A “supermoon” appears bigger and brighter than usual due to its close proximity to Earth.

Learn more about it HERE> https://t.co/Y4cFGkOgL8 pic.twitter.com/zCQcBcCCH7

— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) November 12, 2024

Here’s what to know about the spectacle and how to see it—if skies are clear—alongside other night sky wonders.

What is a supermoon?

From our vantage point on Earth, not every full moon looks exactly the same size. Sometimes that’s due to a trick of the eye—when the moon is low near the horizon, for example, it looks larger, in a phenomenon called the moon illusion. But other times, it can look larger because the moon is physically closer to Earth, and these events are known as supermoons.

The moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle; instead, it charts its path around Earth in an ellipse—sometimes coming slightly closer and sometimes straying farther away. In all, the difference between the moon’s nearest and farthest points in its orbit is larger than three entire Earth diameters.

When the full moon occurs near its most distant point, known as apogee, its illuminated surface appears smaller and dimmer than usual and is known as a micromoon. And when the full moon falls within 90 percent of its closest point to Earth, called perigee, that is known as a supermoon. It appears about 14 percent brighter and 7 percent larger than the average full moon—and compared to a micromoon, the difference is even more dramatic.

To be sure, it can be hard for casual and experienced observers alike to notice the difference between a regular full moon and a supermoon. But for the best view, the Museum of Science in Boston recommends looking at the moon as it rises.

The series of full moons this year isn’t out of the ordinary. “That time of closest approach to Earth, or perigee, happens three or four times each year due to the motions of Earth and the moon around the sun,” NASA research scientist Dennis Gallagher says in a statement. As a result, supermoons are not rare, and neither is a sequence of them—these phenomena always occur consecutively. But even if it’s your fourth time seeing a supermoon this year, the view remains stunning.

When are supermoons the most visible?

Supermoons appear biggest and brightest at moonrise! This November’s supermoon peaks on the 15th but can be seen through the 18th.#Moon #Supermoon #Space #Astronomy #Astrophotography pic.twitter.com/GIaSmesyKl

— Museum of Science (@museumofscience) November 13, 2024

What is a Beaver Moon?

The name Beaver Moon has roots in Native American traditions, according to NASA’s Serena Whitfield. November’s full moon might have earned this name because it coincides with the time when beavers become more active as they prepare for winter. It was also the time to set beaver traps before wetlands froze over.

Native American names for the full moons were published in the Old Farmer’s Almanac beginning in the 1930s, which brought them to wider use. November’s full moon is known not only as the Beaver Moon, but also as the Frost or Frosty Moon and the Snow Moon, among other names.

This week, NASA has used the Beaver Moon to tout an unusual application of its Earth-observing satellites: monitoring habitat where beavers have been reintroduced. The large rodents are crucial to the health of ecosystems, but they were trapped nearly to extinction by barely 400 years after European colonization of North America. Now, their numbers are rebounding, and NASA has been working with conservationists and ranchers in Idaho to find streams that could support reintroduced beavers, as well as monitor the vegetation changes once the animals have been returned to the habitat.

Beaver Rewilding Impacts Measured by NASA

Watch on

What else to see in the sky

As the Beaver Moon charts its path across the sky, it will pass near the Pleiades star cluster in the constellation Taurus the bull, per Space.com’s ​​Brett Tingley. The open cluster contains thousands of stars, but only a handful are visible to the naked eye.

While you’re looking up, keep an eye out for planets—five will be visible over the course of the evening. Look low in the southwest around sunset to spot Mercury, then, after twilight, look higher in the sky for Venus, in the same direction. It’ll be unmistakable as the brightest object in that part of the sky. Jupiter will appear brightly in the east, rising about two hours after the moon. And to the south, Saturn will already be elevated when the moon comes up, according to Space.com. Finally, just before midnight local time, Mars will rise in the east.

But the planetary party continues past the night of the supermoon: “The next month or two should be a great time for Jupiter and Saturn watching,” Johnston writes for NASA. “Both will continue to shift westward each night, gradually making them easier to see earlier in the evening sky.”

Though this series of supermoons is coming to an end, a plethora of other celestial spectacles are just getting started. Also this weekend, the famously fast Leonid meteor shower peaks, offering viewers a chance at spotting extra-bright fireballs and horizon-hugging Earth-grazers. In December, the Geminid meteor shower promises to dazzle sky watchers with even more shooting stars. And on December 7, Jupiter will be at its closest point to Earth, appearing brighter than it does at any other time of year.

In March 2025, a wide swath of the planet—including most of North America—will be treated to a total lunar eclipse, during which the illuminated face of the full moon will appear red.

Carlyn Kranking | | READ MORE

Carlyn Kranking is the assistant web editor for science and innovation.