The smallest micromoon in nearly 5 years rises Saturday night
Not all Full Moons are equal, and Saturday night's is the smallest we'll see in 2025, but also the smallest we've seen in years!
Look up, Saturday night, to see the Pink Moon rising. This is the smallest and dimmest micromoon of the year, and we haven't seen a Full Moon this small since late 2020!
Check your weather forecast for clear skies this weekend, for a chance to see the Full Pink Moon.
The Moon will be up all night long, Saturday night, rising in the southeast just as the Sun has set in the west, and setting just before sunrise, Sunday morning.
What is a Pink Moon?
Nearly every Full Moon goes by a variety of names, originating from different cultures. The most common name for the April Full Moon in the western world is the 'Pink Moon'.
Each Full Moon of 2025 is shown in this infographic, along with their popular names, whether they are a micromoon or supermoon, a perigee or apogee Full Moon, and whether they are remarkable in some other way, such as the Harvest Moon or a lunar eclipse. Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Fred Espenak/Scott Sutherland
This name originates from the lunar calendar of the indigenous peoples living in what is now the US Northeast.
Pink Moon isn't a reference to the Moon's colour, though. Instead, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac, this Full Moon gets its name from a flowering plant called wild ground phlox. Also known as pink moss, this is one of the first wildflowers that blooms in the US Northeast during the spring.
Other names used by indigenous people for the April Full Moon are the Breaking Ice Moon (Algonquin), Broken Snowshoe Moon (Anishinaabe), Budding Moon of Plants and Shrubs (Tlingit), Frog Moon (Cree), Moon of the Red Grass Appearing (Oglala), Moon When the Ducks Come Back (Lakota), Moon When the Geese Lay Eggs (Dakota), Moon When the Streams are Again Navigable (Dakota), Sucker Moon (Anishinaabe), and Sugar Maker Moon (Western Abenaki).
It's important to note these names were not only for the Full Moon alone. Like many other advanced cultures around the world, the indigenous peoples of North America tracked their year using a lunar calendar. The name for each moon actually refers to the 'lunation' — the roughly 29-day period between that Full Moon and the next. Thus, 2025's Pink Moon is actually between the night of April 12 and the night of May 12.
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Smallest Full Moon?
Not all Full Moons are equal in our sky.
The orbit of the Moon for April 2025, with each corresponding lunar phase shown. Although the orbit may appear circular at this scale, it is, in fact, an ellipse, as the distances of the Full Moon (406,006 km) and New Moon (375,871 km) demonstrate. (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Fred Espenak/Scott Sutherland)
As the Moon orbits around the Earth, it doesn't trace out a perfect circle. Instead, it follows an elliptical path. So, for roughly half of each orbit, the Moon is closer to Earth, and for the rest, it is farther away.
This causes the Moon's apparent size in our sky to grow and then shrink, in a fairly regular pattern.
The phases of the Moon for April 2025, showing how the Moon appears smaller and smaller in our sky through the first half of the month, as the Moon approaches apogee (its farthest distance from Earth), and then larger and larger throughout the rest of the month, as it approaches perigee (its closest distance to Earth). (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Scott Sutherland)
Due to the Moon being near its farthest distance to Earth on Saturday night, this Apogee Micromoon will appear about 90 per cent as bright as a typical Full Moon, and it will be only around three-quarters as bright as the November Perigee Supermoon.
The apparent change in size of the Moon doesn't play out exactly the same way each month, though. Due to the influence of the Sun and other planets, the Moon's orbital ellipse changes with each pass around our planet. That means that nearly every Full Moon occurs at a different distance to Earth.
The Full Moons of February through June of 2025, arranged to show how the Moon appears smaller each month from February to March to April, and then appears larger from April to May to June. (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Scott Sutherland)
As a result, we see a second pattern — one where there's a closest Full Moon of the year, known as the Perigee Moon, and there's also a farthest Full Moon of the year, known as the Apogee Moon. Perigee Full Moons and Apogee Full Moons occur, on average, about six to seven months apart. In 2025, April has the Apogee Moon, while the Perigee Moon is in November.
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Smallest Full Moon in years
There's a third pattern overlaid on top of this, as well, as we see Apogee Moons roughly every 12-14 months, with the same being true of Perigee Moons. Thus, each year, the timing of the Apogee Moon and Perigee Moon typically advances by a month compared to the previous year. Due to this time, there are some years that can technically skip having an Apogee Full Moon.
The Apogee Micromoons of 2020-2025, from the Astropixels site. The apparent size in arcminutes — an extremely accurate astronomical measurement of size in the sky — shows that the April 2025 one is only slightly larger than the October 2020 one. There was a smallest Full Moon of 2022, which occurred on January 17, but it was larger than the December 2021 Full Moon. (NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Fred Espenak/Scott Sutherland)
According to retired NASA scientist Fred Espenak's website, Astropixels, the April 12-13 Apogee Moon is 406,006 kilometres away at that time. That is the farthest, and thus smallest Full Moon in our sky, in nearly five years.
The last time we had a Full Moon farther away was on October 31, 2020, when it was 406,166 km from Earth. The next time we have a Full Moon that's farther will be next year, during the May 31 Blue Moon.
(Thumbnail image of the April 2023 Pink Moon courtesy viewer submission from Grand Fork, British Columbia)