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The 2014 Hunter's Moon appears over the horizon at the Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge in Wyoming. | Photo courtesy of USFWS Mountain-Prairie/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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The most luminous supermoon of 2024 will cross the skies of Southern California and elsewhere Wednesday evening with an early Thursday apex, astronomers announced.
The supermoon will appear on the horizon just ahead of 6 p.m. Wednesday, ascending to its most brilliant phase at 4:26 a.m. Thursday.
This will be the third of four consecutive supermoons and the brightest by a slim margin for 2024, according to Gordon Johnston from NASA.
“As the full Moon after the Harvest Moon, this will be the Hunter’s Moon,” Johnston wrote on NASA’s website. “The earliest written use of the term ‘Hunter’s Moon’ identified in the Oxford English Dictionary is from 1710. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, with the leaves falling and the deer fattened, it is time to hunt. Since the harvesters have reaped the fields, hunters can easily see the animals that have come out to glean and the foxes that have come out to prey upon them.”
This week’s super moon will come within 222,055 miles of Earth, the closest position of the year which accounts for its brightness, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac. September’s “Harvest” full moon was 222,131 miles from Earth.
“While a super moon is technically bigger and brighter than a regular full moon, it only appears about 7% larger, which can be an imperceptible difference to the human eye, depending on other conditions,” according to the Almanac. “As the moon drifts over the horizon around sunset, it may appear larger and more orange — perfect for the fall season!”
While the Harvest Moon gets its name from appearing in time for the autumn harvest, aiding farmers who need light after dark to move product out of the fields, the Hunter’s Moon derives its name from different traditions and lore, according to Johnston and the Almanac.
By some accounts, it gained its name from game hunters in the 1700s who relied on the autumn super moons to spy deer, elk, buffalo and other wild animals grazing by moonlight to add weight ahead of the winter season. Johnston said Native American tribes dubbed the autumn super moons “travel moons” for signaling when it was time to leave the mountains for lower elevations ahead of winter weather.
Information on determining moon viewing is online at almanac.com/astronomy/moon-rise-and-set and science.nasa.gov/skywatching/.
