When and where to see the Beaver Moon 2027
The exact moment of full moon is Saturday, November 13, 2027 at 10:26 PM in New York. The best night to watch is Saturday, November 13, when the Moon comes up at 4:00 PM, low in the east-northeast, about 39 minutes before sunset. It climbs to about 72° above the horizon around 11:39 PM and sets around sunrise the next morning.
A full moon looks full for about three nights. From New York the Moon is 98% lit when it rises the evening before and 99% the evening after, and on those nights it rises 34 minutes and 42 minutes later each evening.
The Moon is at a declination of +23.0° this time, well north of the celestial equator, so for the Northern Hemisphere it rides high and stays up a long time. It sits in front of the stars of Aries, close to the Pleiades (9.6° away).
| City | Exact full moon (local time) |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles | Saturday, November 13, 2027, 7:26 PM |
| New York | Saturday, November 13, 2027, 10:26 PM |
| London | Sunday, November 14, 2027, 3:26 AM |
| Berlin | Sunday, November 14, 2027, 4:26 AM |
| New Delhi | Sunday, November 14, 2027, 8:56 AM |
| Tokyo | Sunday, November 14, 2027, 12:26 PM |
| Sydney | Sunday, November 14, 2027, 2:26 PM |
Why is it called the Beaver Moon?
The Beaver Moon is the November full moon. The Old Farmer's Almanac gives two explanations that fit together: beavers are busy finishing their lodges and storing food before the ponds freeze, and in the fur trade era it was the time to set beaver traps, before the swamps iced over, to secure warm winter furs.
Beaver pelts drove much of the early colonial economy of the northeast, which may be why this name stuck when the almanacs gathered the list.
Other names for the November full moon
The almanac names are one tradition among many. Native American peoples used hundreds of moon names that followed their own local seasons, and the attributions below are those given by the Old Farmer's Almanac:
- Frost Moon: Cree and Assiniboine
- Freezing Moon: Ojibwe
- Deer Rutting Moon: Dakota
- Digging or Scratching Moon: Tlingit
- Whitefish Moon: Algonquin
November in nature and the sky
November is late autumn: the trees are bare, the first hard frosts and snows arrive in the north, and animals prepare for winter. Beavers are at their busiest, and the November nights are long enough for the winter constellations, Orion and Taurus, to be up by mid-evening.
The November full moon passes through Aries or Taurus, often close to the Pleiades, and climbs high in the sky at midnight.
Festivals on the Beaver Moon 2027
Many of the world's calendars are lunar, so festivals around the globe fall on this same full moon. Dates below were checked against published calendars; where India and the US keep different dates, both are given.
Guru Nanak Jayanti and Kartik Purnima
November 14, 2027 (India); November 13 in New York
Sikhs celebrate the birth anniversary of Guru Nanak on the Kartik full moon, and Hindus keep Kartik Purnima with river bathing and lamps.
Dev Diwali
November 13, 2027
The festival of lamps on the ghats of Varanasi.
Loy Krathong
Expected November 13, 2027
Thailand's floating basket festival, held on the full moon of the 12th Thai lunar month.
Il Poya
November 13, 2027
Sri Lanka's November full moon holiday, kept the day before the astronomical full moon this year.
The Leonid meteor shower peaks on November 18, 2027 under a waning gibbous Moon, so it is a poor Leonid year.
Supermoon, micromoon or neither?
The Beaver Moon 2027 is 378,754 km from Earth, centre to centre. That is neither a supermoon (closer than 362,500 km) nor a micromoon (farther than 405,000 km); it appears 1.5% wider than a full moon at the average distance. Of the 12 full moons of 2027, it is the 5th closest. The biggest is the Wolf Moon at 357,635 km and the smallest the Buck Moon at 405,968 km.
The Beaver Moon from the Southern Hemisphere
South of the equator November is late spring, with jacaranda blossom in Australia and South Africa, and the full moon is low and short-lived. The full moon happens at the same instant worldwide; in Sydney it is Sunday, November 14, 2027 at 2:26 PM, and the Moon climbs to about 31° there that night, compared with 72° from New York. South of the equator the Moon also looks upside down to northern eyes, with the dark "Man in the Moon" features flipped.
Before and after the Beaver Moon
More: All full moon names · Moon calendar 2027 · Next full moon · Moon phase today