See a super rare Super Hunter's Harvest Moon rise tonight!
This year, October's Full Moon is the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon, and a supermoon.
Look up, tonight, to see 2025's Super Hunter's Harvest Moon lighting up the sky.
At precisely 11:49 p.m. EDT, on Monday, October 6, the Moon, Earth, and Sun will be in syzygy, aligning so the Earth-facing side of the Moon is fully illuminated by the Sun.
With the Moon very near perigee (the closest point to Earth in its orbit), this will be 2025's first supermoon of the year. At a distance of 361,458 kilometres, or roughly 34,000 km closer than average, this Full Moon will appear slightly larger than normal in our sky.
Without a direct comparison to the smaller Full Moons of this year, it's difficult to see this size difference (and most often the Moon appears bigger to us due to the Moon Illusion).
However, it will be much easier to notice the difference in brightness, as it will be about 25 per cent brighter than a typical Full Moon.
READ MORE: What is the mysterious Moon Illusion?
What is the Harvest Moon?
The Harvest Moon is the Full Moon that occurs closest to — either before or after — the September Equinox.
According to NASA, "The first known written use of this name in the English language (per the Oxford English Dictionary) was in 1706. On average moonrise is about 50 minutes later each night. Around the Harvest Moon, this time is shorter, about 25 minutes for the latitude of Washington, D.C., and only 10 to 20 minutes farther north in Canada and Europe. During the fall harvest season farmers sometimes need to work late into the night by moonlight (especially before the introduction of artificial lights)."
The three Full Moons of this year's fall season. All three are supermoons, as they occur near the Moon's closest approach to Earth for their month, with the first also the Harvest Moon for 2025. Credit: Scott Sutherland/NASA GSVS/Fred Espenak
Due to the timing of the Harvest Moon, most often, it coincides with September's Corn Moon. However, every three to five years, the October Hunter's Moon falls within the first week of October. In that case, it is also that year's Harvest Moon.
and a Hunter's Moon?
Technically, when it comes to folklore Moon names, the Hunter's Moon is supposed to be the Full Moon that follows the Harvest Moon.
In most years, that works out just fine: The Corn Harvest Moon occurs in September and then we see the Hunter's Moon in October.
This graphic collects all the relevant data about each of the 12 Full Moons of 2025, including their popular names, whether they are a 'super' or 'micro' Moon, a 'perigee' or 'apogee' Moon, and whether they are remarkable in some other way (Harvest Moon, lunar eclipse, etc.). Credit: Scott Sutherland/NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Fred Espenak
It just so happens that this year, due to the timing of the Harvest Moon (as mentioned above), it occurs at the exact same time as the Hunter's Moon.
However, very rarely, we can get an October with both a Harvest Moon and a Hunter's Moon. For this to work out, though, we need an October with two Full Moons.
The last time this happened was just 5 years ago, in 2020. The Harvest Moon, all by itself, was on October 1. Then, on October 31, we had the Blue Hunter's Moon. We have to wait until 2039 to see this again.
READ MORE: Why is the supermoon so compelling to us?
Super Hunter's Harvest Moon??
In 2025, the October Full Moon is also this year's first supermoon, so we have the Super Hunter's Harvest Moon tonight.
The Harvest Moon hangs over Stonehenge in this composite image, which pairs the best shot of the Moon and the best shot of the ancient stone megalith, on the night of October 5, 2017. (Jeff Welch (CC BY 2.0))
This combination is fairly rare, though. You have to go back 19 years, to the night of October 6, 2006, to see the last time all three of these factors lined up.
We have an even longer wait for the next one, though.
The next two instances where we have an early October supermoon are in 2058 and 2077. For both, though, it occurs on the first night of the month. So, we end up with two Full Moons during each of those Octobers.
In 2058, we will see a Super Harvest Moon on the night of October 1, and then a Blue Hunter's Moon on October 31. In 2077, the Perigee Harvest Moon (the largest and brightest supermoon of the year) will be on October 1 and the Super Blue Hunter's Moon will be on the 31st.
The next time all three happen simultaneously, giving us another Super Hunter's Harvest Moon, is on the night of October 2, 2085!
(Thumbnail image courtesy Kosala Rajapaksha, who captured this view of the 2022 Harvest Moon from Saskatoon, SK)