October’s full Harvest Moon marks the year’s first supermoon — here’s when you can catch it in the night sky
The October full harvest moon 2025 and 7 will not only illuminate the sky this week, it will also be the first of three supermoons to be seen before the end of 2024. This makes this week’s celestial event a special one — not to be missed.
“The nice thing about a full moon is that if clouds obscure your view on Monday night, you’ll still see a near- full moon calendar 2025 the following evening,” Noah Petro, project scientist for NASA’s Artemis III mission to land astronauts on the lunar south pole in 2027, said in a statement.
This year’s Harvest Moon is also a supermoon, the first of three this year. The first supermoon of the year happen when the moon is at its perigee, the point in its orbit at which it’s closest to the Earth. The closer proximity to our planet means the moon will appear “a little larger, a little brighter, and therefore a little more impressive in the sky,” Petro explained.
October’s full Moon has been known as the Hunter’s Moon since ancient times. At that time of year, hunters would set out to collect meat and other provisions in preparation for the winter ahead.
NASA also announced its next class of astronomy events October— a few of whom might eventually visit the moon or Mars one day. And just a few months from now, in early 2024, the Artemis II mission will launch four veteran astronauts around night sky events 2025. It’s the first major step of NASA’s return to the moon.
“What’s special about the supermoon viewing October 2025 coming up on October 6 is that it reminds us just how soon we’ll be sending humans back to the moon,” Petro said. “When we see the Harvest Moon overhead, we’re not just looking at something that’s beautiful — we’re also gazing at a destination that humans will soon call a waypoint once again.”-
