PICTURES: December night skies are illuminated by the last supermoon of 2025

 From Thursday night until Friday morning, the last supermoon of 2025 illuminated skies all over the globe, producing stunning illuminated landscapes.

The Beijing Planetarium reports that the peak of this supermoon occurred at 07:14 Beijing time on Friday morning.

The moon was at its perigee, or closest point to Earth, around 12 hours earlier, when the distance between the Earth and the moon was fewer than 360,000 kilometers. This satisfied the widely accepted criteria for a supermoon and placed it as the second-largest full moon of the year.

The most recent supermoon event was preceded by a beautiful and even larger one in November, which happened nine hours before the perigee, as well as a lesser one in October.

According to astronomers, the key to fully appreciating the supermoon is all about timing and location. They highlight that the golden hour occurs not long after nightfall, when the moon is barely rising.

An illusion that makes the shimmering moon seem very huge and full against a backdrop of trees or buildings might make it seem even more amazing.

"The moon may seem bigger against the terrestrial landscape when it is just rising. With no contrasting objects around it, it appears smaller by midnight of the same day when it is high in the sky. Kou Wen, a senior engineer at the Beijing Planetarium, stated that this is only a trick and not a genuine change in size.

Although the next supermoon is expected to be even more remarkable, astronomers predict that it won't occur until this time next year.

"The next supermoon like this will be in December of the following year." The gap between the full moon and perigee passage will be just six or seven hours that time, which is even closer than both occurrences this year, Kou stated.