A beaver supermoon will reach peak brightness Wednesday morning, according to Smithsonian Magazine, marking the closest and brightest full moon of 2025.
The moon will hit its peak at 5:19 a.m. on Nov. 5, when it will be below the horizon for many U.S. viewers.
Even so, skywatchers can catch the full, bright appearance on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, when the moon will still look nearly identical to its moment of maximum illumination.
November’s full moon earns its “supermoon” label because it occurs near the moon’s perigee, the point in its orbit where it comes closest to Earth—about 226,000 miles away.
This month’s event is the second in a trio of consecutive full supermoons and is expected to be the closest of the year, said Sara Russell, a mineralogist and planetary scientist at London’s Natural History Museum, in an interview with Sky News.
Supermoons appear roughly 7% larger than an average full moon and up to 14% larger than a full moon at its farthest point, according to NASA.
The most noticeable difference, however, is brightness.
EarthSky reports that a supermoon can appear about 16% brighter than a typical full moon and roughly 30% brighter than the dimmest ones.
Scientists say those differences can be so subtle that many people— even regular moon observers—may not detect them without side-by-side comparisons.
“The difference is most obvious as a comparison between other images or observations,” Shannon Schmoll, director of Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University, told the Associated Press’ Adithi Ramakrishnan.
Lowell University astronomer Lawrence Wasserman added that supermoons can cause slightly higher tides.
The word “supermoon” is relatively new, coined in 1979 by American astrologer Richard Nolle to describe a new or full moon that occurs within 10 percent of its closest approach to Earth.
Using that definition, this year has already seen eight supermoons—five of them new moons that passed earlier in the year.
Today, the term is used almost exclusively for full moons that appear slightly larger or brighter than usual.
The concept has faced some pushback in the scientific community.
EarthSky’s Deborah Byrd and Marcy Curran note that some astronomers consider the phrase “hype” rather than a scientifically meaningful category.
As for the name “beaver moon,” historians trace it to seasonal activity.
Beavers typically begin sheltering in their lodges during this time of year, which coincided with the height of the North American beaver-trapping season.
Scholars Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Martha Kreipe de Montaño explain in The Native American Almanac that many Indigenous cultures named each full moon to mark seasonal changes in ecosystems, animals, plants, and climate.
November moon names have included the digging or scratching moon, the deer rutting moon, and the whitefish moon, among others.
Though this month’s beaver supermoon may not dramatically change the night sky, astronomers say it still offers a worthwhile moment to step outside and look up.
The event reflects the same orbital patterns and distances that helped shape conditions for life on Earth, a reminder of how the solar system’s structure influences even familiar sights overhead.
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