Premium

Sky Candy and the Beaver Moon

Charlie Martin | 11:49 AM on November 07, 2025
NASA via AP

I continue to be obsessed with K-pop Demon Hunters, but I promise this is the Beaver Moon and not the Honmoon.

And I'll leave it to you all to be completely discrete and well-mannered and not make any off color remarks about the moon.

So, anyway, this month's full moon was what's called a "supermoon," because it came when the moon was at perigee, it's closest approach to Earth. It doesn't actually make all that much difference, but it sure makes for some great pictures.

Amazingly, it was a supermoon all over the world.

I've taken to asking Grok about any twitter, er, X images that look suspicious, and there are a good number of them that are indeed AI or Photoshop. But, amazingly, this one is real.

But it's not all supermoons this week. Erica (@ExploreCosmos_) is an actual astrophysicist who has done some really good posts. (I'm thinking of doing a Sky Candy, or maybe a separate post, concentrating on the science as well as cool images. Let me know in the comments if you-all would be interested.)

We don't see the Sun from this angle very often. This is a really extraordinary picture.

It's not exactly sky candy, but it's very interesting. Recent Hurricane Melissa was the strongest hurricane on record ever, and it broke lots of records.

This is another real one. 

My research assistant has this to say:

  • The post showcases a 2021 Hubble Space Telescope image of AG Carinae, a luminous blue variable star 20,000 light-years away, depicting its nebula as evidence of ongoing mass ejection driven by radiation overpowering gravity.
  • Classified as one of the Milky Way's most luminous objects, AG Carinae boasts up to 70 solar masses and 1 million times the Sun's brightness, with peer-reviewed studies (e.g., Nota et al., 2021) confirming its instability leads to episodic outbursts shedding material at rates of 10^-5 solar masses per year.
  • This cosmic "tug-of-war" represents a brief evolutionary phase for such giants, lasting mere millions of years before likely culminating in a supernova, offering astronomers rare insights into stellar death throes.

We really don't have enough time to follow what the Universe is doing. Here's a story I wish I could watch throughout.

The Sun is up to its old tricks.

It's getting too late in the year for me to really want to be this far north, but wow.

Comet Lemmon is still putting on a good show.

My Cherokee ancestors said Rabbit was the trickster god, and that's how he ended up on the Moon. (And you thought that was a man in the moon.) I'm thinking 3I Atlas ought to be renamed Rabbit, or Coyote, or Loki.

Here's a closeup. See the rabbit?

Sadly, 3I Atlas probably isn't an alien spaceship. Darn it.

Another great view. This is another one that seems like it must be AI, but it's not.

There's a whole lot of stars out there. As it says, this is a deep field image like the famous one from Hubble, taken by the Webb Telescope. Those are galaxies. Each one has billions or trillions of stars. And most of those stars have planets.

This one is wild. It's one of the oldest objects we've observed. And it's weird. It's a black hole that doesn't have much of an accretion disk, unlike, say, Sagittarius A*, our own local supergiant black hole. Not very well explained yet.

John Krause is Andrew McCarthy's only competition on amazing sky photographs.

So that's it for this week. Sorry if I disappointed you by not using K-pop Demon Hunters for the soundtrack. As always, I love comments. As I said above, let me know if you would prefer a Sky Candy with more science or a separate science-oriented post.

Related: Hear Our Voice Unwavering: Why KPop Demon Hunters Deserves Every Oscar (and Then Some)

And come back next week for more Sky Candy. Assuming the 3I Atlas aliens don't interrupt.

Charlie Martin

Charlie Martin writes on science, health, culture, and technology for PJ Media. For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Read more by Charlie Martin

Category:

COLUMNS

Tags:

SPACE

Recommended

Obama’s Shocking Admission Changes Everything About the Democratic Party Matt Margolis
Welcome to the Real World, Former Food Stampers Ashley McCully
Trump Just Pulled the Rug Out From Under Antifa Terrorists Victoria Taft
Something Doesn’t Add Up in New Jersey’s Election Results — and Pollsters Know It Matt Margolis
Politico Just Discovered What Rubio’s Been Saying All Year About 2028 Sarah Anderson
Self-Deporting Dad Wants to Bring His Kid With Him, School District Said No — to Defy ICE Catherine Salgado

Trending on PJ Media Videos

Advertisement

Trending

Editor's Choice

Florida Man Friday: Half a Skull, Full of Trouble
Predator Watch: The Coyotes Living Among Us
FRIDAY AT 3 P.M. EASTERN: 'Five O'Clock Somewhere' With Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Erika Haas - Replay
Advertisement