Caoimhín's Content

In answer to the title: In terms of distance, yes it is!

Today we are going to be looking at the Full Moon and yet another supermoon. I have mentioned in previous pieces that for a couple of months now, at least since August, it’s felt like every Full Moon has been a supermoon. Technically, if you are being generous with the range of distances that a supermoon can be, they have all been supermoons. Of course when the same thing happen so many times in a row, they can seem less exciting and special.

It looks like October is, not only going to be yet another supermoon, but the closest of the lot! Looking at the night sky on the night of the Full Moon this month, the 17th, there is also a visible comet. Comet 2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) is visible just above the sunset over this weekend. If you’d like to learn more about that comet you can take a look at one of my previous pieces, which was all about that comet and the other comet, C/2024 S1, that are around at the moment.

The Full Moon this month will reach at 99.8% full, but that is about as full as we are going to see it from Ireland. As the night progresses, rather than climbing up to 99.9% it goes down to 99.7%, so it looks like this 99.8% is as full as we’re going to see the Moon this month. Last month the Full Moon was 100%, but no location on Earth always gets to see the 100% Full Moon. When it first rises for us we will be seeing it at a distance of 354,664 kilometers. The 100’s and lower units don’t really matter too much. Most of the changes that we’re going to notice, the significant ones, are going to be up in the tens and hundreds of thousands. The distance to the Moon varies by a kilometer pretty quickly, it only takes a minute or two for the distance to the Moon to change by that amount. as the Moon rises and gets a little less full, it does get closer. The distance drops down to under 354,000 kilometers, eventually dropping down to just 353,594 kilometers away.

Continuing through the night, it seems that on the night of the 17th, and into the morning of the 18th, gets down to just 353,082 kilometers away. If we start measuring fractions of a kilometer, it it goes down to about half a kilometer, and then it starts going back up again. It is hard to get exactly smallest distance, given how quickly the Moons distance from us can change on a scale of mere meters. Based on the simulation in Stellarium from Ireland, it seems to get down to 353,082.497 kilometers, which I am happy to round up to 353,082 kilometers and a half.

This is, definitely quite close. Let’s say that this, our Full Moon for October, at as close as it’s going to get, is 353,000 kilometers away. We can quickly go back an entire month to our Full Moon for September. This one did reach 100% full for us here in Ireland, and while it was at its fullest, it was about 353,953 kilometers away, almost a 1000 kilometers further from us. The last supermoon in September was still an interesting Full Moon, of course it was 100% full, there was an occultation of Saturn a few days before, we had the partial lunar eclipse. It was also called a supermoon, and there is only about a 1000 kilometers of a difference, which isn’t a lot when it comes to space. Going back to the previous Full Moon before that, in August, at 99.8% full it was about 358,000 kilometers away. It was also still called a supermoon, even though it is thousands of kilometers further away. Often, any Full Moon within 360,000 kilometers is called a supermoon, given that a micromoon can be 400,00 kilometers away, and the average is closer to 375,000 kilometers.

Coming back to the October Full Moon, the 17th is the date on which the Moon will be 100% somewhere. However, on the 16th of October, or just after midnight on the 16th, technically the 17th, the Moon will be even closer, around 352,000 kilometers. We should be able to see almost Full Moon as close as about 352,600 kilometers. That’s around as close as it’s going to get, definitely closer to us, than on the night of the 17th leading into the 18th. From here, the Moon will, start getting further away. About 350,000 is the closest the Moon can get to us. Moving ahead to the next Full Moon, in November, we should be able to see it at at least 99.9% full . However, it will be up to 356,000 kilometers away. That is closer to us again than the Full Moon in August, which was considered a supermoon, so we can see that the Moon is still staying pretty close to us for another month.

The October supermoon coming up this weekend will be the most super of the supermoons as far as I can tell. The supermoons on either side are further away. Comparing the very beginning of the 17th to the very end almost 24 hours later, from Ireland the Moon is about 99.6% full at either point. Both points are very close to the absolute fullest, but as the Moon gets More full, up to 99.7%, it is gets a little bit further from us. The Moon will be at its closest to us this month a little bit before it is at its absolute fullest. The change ion distance is of course thanks to the ellipse that the Moon takes around the Earth. As we know, the closest point in that orbit can sometimes be when it’s in front of the Sun, or almost, as it must be to cause a total solar eclipse instead of an annular solar eclipse. The closest point can be anywhere along its orbit, regardless of its phase as seen from the Earth. For this reason, we don’t always get the very closest approach when it’s at its absolute fullest for any given location on the Earth. Somewhere on Earth on October 17th, the Moon will reach 100% full and it will be close to 352, 000 or 353,000 kilometers away, but whatever part of the Earth sees this Full Moon at 100-percent full, there’s no guarantee that it will also be at its closest at that moment,.

The Full Moon is of course a good time to take a closer look at the Moon and supermoons are a great target for observation. However, as I’ve said many, many times, the Moon is almost a little bit better if you catch it closer to a Half Moon. As we are only seeing the Moon at 99.6% full, we can see a little bit of the terminator along the edge. This lets us see some of the shadows of the craters, but the white part in the center of the Moon will look very smooth. Of course the Full Moon lets us see the Sea of Tranquility. I always imagine a football player on the Moon, with a head for the Sea of Serenity, the Sea of Nectar and the Sea of Fecundity for legs and a football from the Sea of Crises. Looking at the Moon Just before midnight on the 16th, it is 352,633 kilometers away. As such, if you head out on midnight, midnight on the 16th heading into the 17th, even though technically the Full Moon is on the 17th, the Moon will be a little closer. Going from the 16th into the 17th by just an hour isn’t going to make too much of a difference, so you can always wait for that as well, the Moon will still be just about 99.6% full. If we hop forward to just before midnight on the 17th heading into the 18th, the Moon will still be 99.6%, but it will be a little bit further away. If you do observe the Moon at both of those moments, you’ll see that the little bit of a shadow will swap to the opposite side. We can tell that we’re seeing it just either side of full, because we will get shadow on one side, it will reach full for some other part of the Earth, and then we’ll get that shadow back on the other side the following night. That is the Full Moon for October, the closest Full Moon to Halloween, also known as the the Hunter’s Moon. Officially we are going to see that, in the 17th, but just before or after midnight on the 16th the Moon will be just as close to its fullest and it is just about at the closest we’re going to see it this year. By the looks of it, it’s not going to get any closer for the next few months.

Of course we’ve also got Jupiter, Mars and Saturn visible to the naked eye at that time. Neptune is in the sky over by Saturn, and Uranus is over by Jupiter and the Pleiades. This gives five planets, all visible in the sky at the same time. If you’re out just a little bit earlier, comet A3 isn’t going to be visible at the same time as Mars or Jupiter, but it will definitely be visible at the same time as the Moon and Saturn. You do need to be pretty early, around 6:45, but that puts a comet, Saturn and the Super Full Moon all visible in sky together. Of course the light of the Full Moon is going to make that comet a little bit harder to see, but it is still there to be observed and you’ll only have to wait a couple of nights for the Moon to be out of the sky and that comet will still be there, although it will be just a little bit fainter.

I hope that you get to see the supermoon in October, it is the “super-est”, so if you’ve been keeping up with all of the other supermoons over the past couple of months, this is the one that’s going to be closest to us. It won’t have a partial eclipse or an occultation associated with it, but it is still interesting as far as a supermoon goes. I do hope you get to see it, I hope you enjoyed this little article about it, if you did make sure to like it. You can also support me by subscribing to this website and to my YouTube channel if you’d like to see more. Most importantly, I hope I’ll see you back here next time.