When and where to see the Hunter's Moon 2027
The exact moment of full moon is Friday, October 15, 2027 at 9:47 AM in New York. The best night to watch is Friday, October 15, when the Moon comes up at 5:58 PM, low in the east-northeast, about 18 minutes before sunset. It climbs to about 65° above the horizon around 1:00 AM and sets around sunrise the next morning.
A full moon looks full for about three nights. From New York the Moon is 99% lit when it rises the evening before and 98% the evening after, and on those nights it rises 25 minutes and 30 minutes later each evening. Those short gaps are the shallow autumn angle of the Moon's path at work, the effect behind the Harvest and Hunter's Moons.
The Moon is at a declination of +12.8° this time, close to the celestial equator, so it rises near due east and sets near due west, up for about twelve hours. It sits in front of the stars of Pisces, close to the planet Saturn (7.6° away).
| City | Exact full moon (local time) |
|---|---|
| Los Angeles | Friday, October 15, 2027, 6:47 AM |
| New York | Friday, October 15, 2027, 9:47 AM |
| London | Friday, October 15, 2027, 2:47 PM |
| Berlin | Friday, October 15, 2027, 3:47 PM |
| New Delhi | Friday, October 15, 2027, 7:17 PM |
| Tokyo | Friday, October 15, 2027, 10:47 PM |
| Sydney | Saturday, October 16, 2027, 12:47 AM |
Why is it called the Hunter's Moon?
The Hunter's Moon is the full moon after the Harvest Moon, so it usually falls in October and occasionally in early November. The Old Farmer's Almanac explains it as the time when game animals were fattened for winter and the harvested fields made them easy to see, so hunters stocked up on meat by its light.
Like the Harvest Moon, the Hunter's Moon benefits from the shallow autumn angle of the Moon's path, so it rises only a little later from one evening to the next, giving a run of bright early evenings. It is also sometimes called the Blood Moon or Sanguine Moon, an old seasonal name that has nothing to do with lunar eclipses.
Other names for the October 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:
- Travel Moon: general usage
- Drying Rice Moon: Dakota
- Falling Leaves Moon: Anishinaabe
- Freezing Moon: Ojibwe
- Migrating Moon: Cree
- Blood Moon or Sanguine Moon: old European usage, not an eclipse
October in nature and the sky
Autumn colour reaches its peak in the northern forests, deer enter the rut, and the last of the harvest is brought in. The nights are now clearly longer than the days, and clocks change at the end of October in Europe and early November in North America.
The Hunter's Moon crosses Pisces, Aries or Taurus, in the autumn sky that also holds the Pleiades and the Andromeda Galaxy, though the bright moonlight drowns faint objects for a few nights.
Festivals on the Hunter's 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.
Sukkot
Begins at sunset October 15, 2027
The Jewish harvest festival of booths starts on the 15th of Tishrei, at the full moon. Families eat in a temporary hut (sukkah) whose roof should let the stars, and this full moon, show through.
Sharad Purnima and Valmiki Jayanti
October 14 and 15, 2027
Sharad Purnima (Kojagiri Purnima) falls on October 14 in both India and New York, with kheer left out in the moonlight, and Valmiki Jayanti on October 15.
Vap Poya and Thadingyut
October 15 (Sri Lanka); around October 14 (Myanmar)
The end of the Buddhist rains retreat in Sri Lanka and the Thadingyut festival of lights in Myanmar.
Diwali follows at the new moon two weeks later, on October 29, 2027 in India (October 28 in New York).
Supermoon, micromoon or neither?
The Hunter's Moon 2027 is 389,926 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 1.4% narrower than a full moon at the average distance. Of the 12 full moons of 2027, it is the 7th closest. The biggest is the Wolf Moon at 357,635 km and the smallest the Buck Moon at 405,968 km.
The Hunter's Moon from the Southern Hemisphere
In the Southern Hemisphere this full moon falls in mid-spring. The southern Hunter's Moon is the one after the March Harvest Moon, usually in April. The full moon happens at the same instant worldwide; in Sydney it is Saturday, October 16, 2027 at 12:47 AM, and the Moon climbs to about 42° there that night, compared with 65° 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 Hunter's Moon
More: All full moon names · Moon calendar 2027 · Next full moon · Moon phase today