Best times to see the Super Harvest Moon and Last Lunar Eclipse

The best time to watch the super harvest moon and partial lunar eclipse

The harvest moon is the full moon that occurs closest to the first day of autumn. It usually rose in the early evening around sunset, which meant that farmers could finish harvesting their fall crops by the bright moonlight, hence the name.

This year, the harvest moon will officially peak on September 17 at 10:35 PM ET, according to NASA. But the harvest moon will appear full for about three days from Monday night to Thursday morning, NASA adds.

The best time to catch any full moon, including the harvest moon, is right around moonrise.

That’s because the moon appears larger and takes on a yellow-orange hue when it’s close to the horizon. No one knows why this illusion occurs, according to NASA, but it makes for some spectacular views and photos of the moon.

The moon will rise over the eastern horizon around 7:00 PM local time on Tuesday for most of the contiguous US, but check the Time and Date for exactly when the moon rises in your area. Here’s when the full harvest moon will rise on Tuesday in five largest US cities:

There is also a partial lunar eclipse on Tuesday night. The eclipse will begin at 8:41 p.m. ET, according to NASA, but you probably won’t see anything happen until it approaches the peak of the eclipse at 10:44 p.m. ET, when the maximum area of ​​the Moon’s surface will be in shadow.

A partial lunar eclipse is when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, casting its shadow over a certain percentage of the Moon’s surface. The closer the Earth, Sun, and Moon are aligned, the more the Moon eclipses the Earth.

For this particular eclipse, about 8.4 percent of the Moon will be submerged in shadow, according to NASA. So at the time of the peak of the eclipse, you should be able to notice that a small chip looks like it’s missing from the top of the Moon.

“The only impact the eclipse has on seeing the moon is that part of the moon will be dimmer than the part outside the Earth’s shadow.” Noah Petro, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told BI via email.

Tuesday’s partial eclipse is the last lunar eclipse of the year. The next lunar eclipse will be a total eclipse on March 14, 2025.

Almost everyone around the world can enjoy the upcoming supermoon, but only regions in North America, South America, Europe and Africa will have a chance to see the lunar eclipse. TimeandDate has a map showing which parts of the globe will get the best eclipse show.

The Harvest Moon is the second supermoon of 2024

This year’s Harvest Moon is the second in a string of four consecutive supermoons, according to EarthSky.

Supermoons occur when a full (or new) moon coincides with perigee—the point in the moon’s orbit when it is closest to Earth.

But this distance is not always the same value, because the moon’s orbit is elliptical, not perfectly circular. Therefore, supermoons vary in how big and bright they can look.

In general, however, supermoons appear about 7 percent larger and 15 percent brighter than a typical full moon, Larry Wasserman, an astronomer at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, told Business Insider via email.

This year’s Harvest Moon will be approximately 222,131 miles from Earth at perigee. For comparison, the closest supermoon this century, in November 2016, was 221,524 miles away, according to EarthSky.

The next two full moons, on October 17 and November 15, will also be supermoons. In particular, October’s full moon – called the hunter’s moon – will be the biggest supermoon of the year.