Last night’s full moon will be the year’s largest. Here you see it rising above Mount Desert Island as night arrived:
At that time, it had to be viewed totally through earth’s dirty atmosphere, which distorts and warmly gilds the orb from our perspective. Once the moon rises above our atmosphere, its appearance returns to cool, silvery cragginess:
This moon reportedly was 220,055 miles from our planet, the closest a full moon will get this year; the average moon proximity to us is about 240,000 miles. Thus, this moon was a supermoon, which usually is defined as a full moon that is within 90 percent of the average lunar distance away from the Earth.
This October full moon is known as the Hunter’s Moon, which is what many northeastern Native Americans reportedly considered it to be: It rises as the days are getting colder and game must be gotten and stored before it gets very difficult to hunt. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on October 17, 2024.)