November’s Full Beaver Supermoon Peaks on Wednesday—and It Will Be the Year’s Biggest
Supermoons occur when full moons coincide with the moon’s closest position to Earth in its orbit
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Earth’s skies are about to be graced with an out-of-this-world spectacle—literally. At 8:19 a.m. Eastern Standard Time this Wednesday, November 5, this month’s full “beaver” supermoon will reach its peak brightness.
Though the massive moon will be under the horizon for many United States viewers at its brightest moment, moon enthusiasts will be able to catch a look on Tuesday evening and Wednesday evening, when the moon will still appear full.
Because the natural satellite’s orbit around Earth isn’t perfectly circular, supermoons occur when a full moon coincides with the moon’s perigee—its closest point to the planet in its orbit, about 226,000 miles away.
Fun fact: How big is the moon?
Compared with Earth, the moon is relatively small—less than a third of our planet's width. Per NASA, a good way to visualize its size is to imagine a pea or coffee bean (the moon) held next to a nickel (Earth).November’s supermoon will be the second of three consecutive full supermoons this year. Sara Russell, a mineralogist and planetary scientist at London’s Natural History Museum, tells Sky News it will also be this year’s biggest—the closest supermoon of 2025.
Supermoons haven’t always been eagerly awaited: The term has only existed since 1979, when American astrologer Richard Nolle coined the term “supermoon” to describe a new or full moon taking place within 10 percent of its nearest point to Earth in its orbit. By that definition, we are experiencing eight supermoons this year—because five new supermoons occurred in earlier months. But now, the term is most often used to describe closer-than-usual full moons.
The idea of a supermoon also comes with some controversy. Per EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd and Marcy Curran, some astronomers don’t approve of the term and consider supermoons “hype” rather than a legitimate celestial phenomenon.
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While the term “supermoon” might lead some to expect a much larger moon in the sky, the size difference could be imperceptible, even to some experienced viewers. According to NASA, a supermoon appears about 7 percent larger than the average full moon and 14 percent larger than a full moon at its most distant point. The supermoon may indeed seem larger when it’s closer to the horizon, but that’s an optical illusion—the moon always looms large in that case. Instead, the most noticeable difference about a supermoon might be its brightness, per EarthSky—it appears about 16 percent brighter than an average full moon and about 30 percent brighter than the farthest full moons.
Without visual confirmation, researchers must turn to other methods to predict and confirm supermoons. The difference “is most obvious as a comparison between other images or observations,” Shannon Schmoll, director of Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University, tells the Associated Press’ Adithi Ramakrishnan. Lowell University astronomer Lawrence Wasserman adds that a supermoon might bring slightly higher tides.
As for the name “beaver” moon, the nickname comes from the fact that beavers start spending time in their lodges at this month of the year—a historic high point for North America’s beaver-trapping season and fur trade.
According to scholars Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe de Montaño, Indigenous American moon names also cover the monthlong period surrounding that moon. “The names of each moon, derived from the climate, budding, blooming, leafing and fruiting of vegetation and the growth and activities of animals, birds and fish, varied from region to region according to environment and latitude,” they wrote in the book The Native American Almanac: A Portrait of Native America Today.
Other November moon names include the digging or scratching moon, deer rutting moon, and whitefish moon.
While November’s full beaver supermoon might not be the visually jaw-dropping astronomical event its name suggests, it can still be worth venturing outside on a cold night to take a look. After all, the phenomenon is a product of the solar system’s distribution of celestial bodies around the sun—the same fortuitous arrangement that helped life to take hold on Earth.
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