November's Beaver Supermoon and Southern Taurid Meteor Shower Peak Together This Week

The moon will be officially full at 8:19 on Wednesday morning, Eastern time, and almost nobody in North America will see it happen. According to The Old Farmer's Almanac, the November full beaver supermoon peaks at that hour, but the moon will be below the horizon. The almanac's practical advice, and the advice here, is to step outside in the evening, when it will be up and bright.

The name comes from the season. This is the time of year when beavers fortify their dams and lodges and stock up on food before winter. The almanac notes that other peoples have their own names for the same moon: the Tlingit call it the digging moon, the Dakota the deer rutting moon, and the Cree the frost moon.

This is the second of three supermoons in a row this year. A supermoon occurs when the moon reaches perigee, its closest point to Earth, which makes it look larger and fuller. Dr. Alissa Bans, director of undergraduate studies in Emory University's department of physics, was candid about how much that matters to the naked eye. The difference is so subtle, she said, that people don't really notice the superness of it. The name is a fun way of flagging that the moon is technically at its biggest and brightest, though on average not much bigger than usual. If clouds block the view where you are, the Virtual Telescope Project will stream the full moon over Manciano, Italy, starting at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday.

The moon shares the day with a second event. The Southern Taurid meteor shower peaks at 8 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to EarthSky. It is not a dramatic shower. Robert Lunsford, fireball report coordinator for the American Meteor Society, said there may be only about five meteors an hour at the peak. Still, he said, any time it is dark from October into early November, observers can watch slow meteors radiate from Aries in October and from Taurus in November.

The Taurids come from Earth's passage through debris shed by the small comet 2P/Encke. That comet has the shortest known orbit of any comet discovered, just 3.3 years, compared with the 200 to 1,000 years of long-period comets. In past years the shower has produced fireballs around Halloween, which is why some people call them the Halloween fireballs.

This year has an added wrinkle. Lunsford said the whole Taurid encounter is special because Earth is predicted to meet some fresh material a bit larger than the average Taurid meteor, and those larger pieces tend to cause fireballs. The catch is the moon. Its light will wash out most of the shower's activity, so the meteors will be hard to spot, though Lunsford said there is still a chance of catching a fireball.

For the best chance, find a spot with clear skies, away from tall buildings and bright lights. Plan to be outside any time after sunset and before the moon reaches its highest point Wednesday night. The shower slightly favors the Northern Hemisphere but is visible in both, Lunsford said. In Australia or South Africa the radiant sits lower in the sky, so the horizon hides more of the meteors.

So the evening offers a bright, only marginally larger moon and a faint shower with a small chance of something spectacular. If the sky is clear, a fireball is the thing worth watching for.