November Supermoon: When To See It in North Texas

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no, it’s a supermoon!

Later this week, Texans can get a glimpse of the supermoon when it reaches its full lunar phase. (Full Lunar Phase sounds like an Explosions in the Sky cover band, doesn’t it?) It’ll be yet another fun reason to look to the heavens for something celestially unique in 2024.

To be fair, it’s not as big a deal as April’s total solar eclipse was, but this week’s supermoon should still be quite the sight. Besides, it’s noteworthy in that it’s the final one for this year and will be the last one to see for quite some time.

NASA says the supermoon “rises after the peak of the Taurid meteor shower and before the Leonids are most active.” NASA also notes that a November supermoon is also called a “beaver moon” because “November is when beavers prepare for the winter by fortifying dams and stocking their food supply. November was also the season to trap beavers for their thick, winter-ready pelts to use for warmer clothing.”

Larger and brighter than the usual full moon, a supermoon is what we see when the moon is closest to Earth while orbiting. Come Friday, the moon will be a mere 225,000 miles from Earth, which does not sound like that much less than the average distance of 238,855, but it’s enough to render super results. Try not to feel cheated if you missed the supermoons in August and September, when the AP says that supermoons were 224,917 miles and 222,131 miles away from Earth, respectively.

Luckily, for supermoon chasers in North Texas, the viewing conditions Friday night look to be pretty swell. A forecast of clear skies all day and into the evening likely means that we’ll have a better perspective on the supermoon than we did of the solar eclipse in the spring, when cloudy skies over Dallas threatened to put a damper on the excitement. Even so, the viewing was pretty special that day.

The average person will not likely be able to detect many differences in the moon on Friday night compared to a typical full moon, but one should be able to easily detect the uptick in brightness.

As we stated earlier, this might not be as big a deal to some since this will be 2024’s fourth supermoon. But it will be the last one for almost a year. According to USA Today, the first supermoon of 2025 will not happen until Oct. 7, so there you have it. Catch it this week or live with regret for the next 47 weeks or so.