Look Up! It’s The Final Supermoon Of The Year

MADISON, Wis. (CIVIC MEDIA) – You’ll have to wait almost an entire year to see another full moon look this big and bright, don’t miss it this weekend alongside a meteor shower.

It’s the last of 4 Supermoon’s of the year, on Friday!

The full moon will appear 30% brighter and look nearly 15% bigger, as it moves closer than normal to Earth’s orbit.

Madison College Astronomy Instructor Dixie Burns says, “The Beaver Moon comes from the Native American Moon naming convention. And, you know, the beavers, they’re going into their dens this time of year and things like that, settling down. that’s where that got that name from. And the super moon is when the moon’s orbit isn’t a perfect circle, so sometimes it’s closer to Earth, and other times, when it’s closest to the earth, we call at perigee, and when the moon’s also full and near perigee at the same time, we call the super moon because it’s just a little bit bigger and brighter in the sky.”

You’ll have to wait awhile to see it look like that again… until October 7th of next year. That’s when we get 3 Supermoons in a row. It’ll move close and look big again on November 5th and December 4th.

Keep an eye out for planets too!

Right now we can see Venus before sunset. After Venus sets, Jupiter rises from the east. And Saturn is in our southern sky.

The Leonids Meteor Shower also peaks this weekend! They’re known for colorful, and really fast flashes throughout the sky. However, that full moon might make them harder to see!

“If you can find a dark sky, you know, somewhere to look you should be able to find some. If you can try to look away from the moon or use something to block off the moon, and your early morning hours are going to be best, 1am 2am to dawn … what you would expect is you would look at the sky if it’s dark, you know, every minute or few minutes, you would see one going by, depending upon the intensity of the meteor shower.” says Burns.

The Leonids peak Saturday night into Sunday morning.

Then we move on to the best meteor shower of the year, the Geminids, in mid-December.