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Harvest Supermoon Will Peak Oct. 6–7 as Year’s Biggest Full Moon

The unusually late Harvest Moon is the first in a run of supermoons closing out 2025.

Saturn appears as the bright yellow point of light to the right of center, glowing alongside the bright Milky Way. Credit: H. Raab (Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Image

Overview

  • The Moon reaches peak fullness at 11:49 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 6 (4:48 a.m. BST on Tuesday, Oct. 7), and will look full for multiple nights.
  • Best views come at moonrise shortly after sunset when it appears on the eastern horizon; typical U.S. moonrise is around 6:30 p.m. on the East Coast, 6:45–7:00 p.m. in the Midwest, and about 6:45 p.m. on the West Coast, with the horizon “moon illusion” enhancing its apparent size.
  • It qualifies as a supermoon because it is near perigee—perigee occurs Oct. 8, about 38 hours after peak—bringing the Moon to roughly 224,599 miles from Earth and making it appear up to about 14% larger and 30% brighter than at apogee.
  • This is the latest Harvest Moon since 1987, so named because it is the full moon closest to the September 22 equinox rather than tied to the calendar month.
  • Early October also features a close Moon–Saturn pairing around Oct. 5–7 and the Draconid meteor peak on Oct. 8 (with moonlight likely reducing faint meteors), with Comet C/2025 A6 and the Orionids around Oct. 21 and additional supermoons on Nov. 5 and Dec. 4.