Moonsighting for this Month

Sha’ban 1441

Wifaqul Ula­ma urges Mus­lims in Britain to attempt to sight the Moon for Sha’Ban 1441 on the evening of tues­day the 24th of march 2020. This will be the 29th of rajab 1441. Moon sight­ing results should be report­ed to Wifaqul Ula­ma, you can noti­fy us via our Email, Twit­ter, Face­book or by call­ing +447956589613.

24th of march, 2020

The New Moon con­junc­tion time is at 9:28 (UT) on the 24th of march 2020 and it is not pos­si­ble to sight the moon on that day. the next day, Sight­ing will be pos­si­ble with naked eye in areas shown in RED.

Crescent Chasers

Com­plete this form and reg­is­ter as a “Cres­cent Chas­er”. This is to facil­i­tate local Moon­sight­ing. When the Moon is sight­ed, all your details are already avail­able to us and you have been pre-vet­ted. It makes your sight­ing a lot to sim­pler to ver­i­fy for the Schol­ars.

In the event of sight­ing, send in your Name & Cres­cent Chas­er ID and the details of your sight­ing. Your sight­ing details must include date, time of the sight­ing and ori­en­ta­tion of the cres­cent. It is bet­ter to send us a pho­to­graph but it is not a require­ment. You only need to con­tact us when sight­ing the cres­cent on the 29th of the Islam­ic month. Sight­ing on any oth­er days do not need ver­i­fi­ca­tion.

Registered members:

Become a member:

Please com­plete the form below.

Moonsighting Tips & Tricks

Read this first:

1. Moon­set: There is no equip­ment which can be used to sight the Moon once it’s set, its gone! Sim­i­lar­ly Moon can­not be sight­ed a few min­utes after sun­set. Make sure to look at moon­set and ensure that there is suf­fi­cient lag­time (moon­set – sun­set) for you to able to sight the cres­cent. This is because the cres­cent is thin and bare­ly lit while the sun­light is bright and the thin cres­cent can­not be seen in the pres­ence of (bright) sun­light. Let us make this impor­tant point again. There is no fil­ter, no binoc­u­lar, no tele­scope which will let you sight the Moon which sets 2,4, or 6 min­utes after sun­set, its impos­si­ble! Moon has to be in the sky for you to sight it.
   
2. Sun: Do not look at the sun direct­ly with your eyes or with your binoc­u­lars, cam­era or tele­scopes with­out an appro­pri­ate solar fil­ter. Your tele­scope and DSLR cam­era can heat up and be dam­aged with­in min­utes if you try to focus on the sun. Put a solar fil­ter in front of your (auto­mat­ic) tele­scope or binoc­u­lars and then track the sun as it sets to get ready to sight the cres­cent.
   
3. Moon: It is eas­i­ly vis­i­ble in the sky if the hori­zons are clear. You do not need to dri­ve hun­dreds of miles for moon­sight­ing, a good van­tage point such as the roof of the Mosque is suf­fi­cient.
   
4. Azimuth: You need to know the Azimuth of the Moon at a giv­en time. You can watch the video below and obtain the exact loca­tion of the Moon. Azimuth is the direc­tion of the Moon.
   

Human Eye:

The human eye is great bless­ing and mar­vel of Allah’s cre­ation. How­ev­er as we age the size of the pupil (which varies) between peo­ple gets even small­er. Our pupil is at its best between the ages of 21–29 (on aver­age) and it is (approx­i­mate­ly) 7.0 mm in aver­age humans, keep this fig­ure in mind.

Human eye has remained the same in thou­sands of years but (light) pol­lu­tion has increased tremen­dous­ly in our sur­round­ings. The sci­en­tif­ic advance­ments are in opti­cal Aids and mag­ni­fi­ca­tion so here is a sum­ma­ry of tools which you can use to assist you in sight­ing of the cres­cent.

No Technology (easy) sighting:

You need to pre­pare for sight­ing of the cres­cent before sun­set. Select your loca­tion with an excel­lent van­tage point and get to the loca­tion before sun­set. You need to observe the sun­set and record the loca­tion. Cres­cent is vis­i­ble in the same (approx­i­mate) area of sun­set (to the right or left). Remem­ber that after moon­set, the cres­cent is no longer on the hori­zon to be seen.

Your eyes need to get used to the sur­round­ings and air tem­per­a­ture and it takes about 15–20 min­utes for your eyes to adjust. 

Software/Apps:

You need the fol­low­ing tools to be able to track the posi­ton of the cres­cent, some of these apps are avail­able on Android while oth­ers on Apple. You need to use them well before you actu­al­ly try to sight the cres­cent to get used to how they func­tion. Your phone (or device) needs to have the right hard­ware, for exam­ple take a look at the com­par­i­son between a LG G6 and Moto G5S Plus. Moto G5S Plus does not have a com­pass which severe­ly lim­its the use of this phone with some of the apps giv­en below. 

1. Stel­lar­i­um: Stel­lar­i­um is a free open source plan­e­tar­i­um for your com­put­er, use the free ver­sion and there is no rea­son for you to pay for it.
2. Sky View Cafe: Sky View is an online por­tal to obtain all the nec­es­sary tech­ni­cal data for the sun and the Moon.
3. Google SkyMap (Andorid): This App is suf­fi­cient on an android phone to track the Moon.
4. SkyView® Lite (iPhone): This App is suf­fi­cient on an iPhone to track the Moon.
5. Luna­Sol­Cal (Andorid): This App is suf­fi­cient on an android phone to track the move­ments of the Sun and the Moon.
6. Luna­Sol­Cal (iPhone): This App is suf­fi­cient on an iPhone to track the move­ments of the Sun and the Moon.
7. Lunar Phase (Android): This App is suf­fi­cient on on an android to track the Moon.
8. Azimuth Com­pass (Android): This App is suf­fi­cient on an android to track the Moon.
9. Com­man­der Com­pass GO(iPhone): This App is suf­fi­cient on an iPhone to track the Moon.

Binoculars:

Binoc­u­lars are a bet­ter choice for Moon­sight­ing because binoc­u­lars are cheap, easy to set­up and robust. Tele­scopes due to their mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, make the field of view small­er. You need to under­stand that as the mag­ni­fi­ca­tion increas­es, the field of view decreas­es. It is because things are get­ting big­ger so you have less area which you can look at and binoc­u­lars are an excel­lent choice for sight­ing the cres­cent, keep these spec­i­fi­ca­tion in mind and buy a binoc­u­lar with:

1. Ful­ly Coat­ed/­Mul­ti-coat­ed/­Ful­ly Mul­ti-coat­ed: This is the anti-reflec­tive coat­ing on your binoc­u­lar and buy the best coat­ing your mon­ey can buy. There is no uni­ver­sal def­i­n­i­tion of coat­ing but check to see that you have full coat­ing (at least).
2. Por­ro Prism: Pur­chase the binoc­u­lars with Por­ro prims instead of Roof prism for Moon­sight­ing. 
3. BaK4: Pur­chase the binoc­u­lars with BaK4 instead of BK7 for Moon­sight­ing. 

Stay away from cheap Ebay/no-name binoc­u­lars even if they claim to have all of these fea­tures! The Cele­stron Sky­Mas­ter (15 x 70 or 25 x 70 or 20 x 100) are excel­lent choic­es for your needs. You need to keep in mind that all of these The Cele­stron Sky­Mas­ter (15 x 70 or 25 x 70 or 20 x 100) are heavy and your hands will get tired very quick­ly. Your hands will also shake so buy a cheap­er Sky­Mas­ter (binoc­u­lar) which is lighter or if you choose to buy a more expen­sive mod­el, buy a tri­pod stand (with an L adap­tor).  Leave your binoc­u­lars out in the open with all caps tak­en off for 15–20 min­utes before you begin to sight because the lens needs to get used to the tem­per­a­ture of the air and sur­round­ings. 

Tripod:

Get a used Tri­pod from Ebay. As a rule of thumb, your tri­pod should be able to hold twice the weight of the binoc­u­lar. Do not buy cheap new tripods, a used tri­pod should cost you no more than £20. Two base mod­els which are ide­al for your binoc­u­lars are and cheap­ly avail­able on Ebay are:

1. Jes­sops Atlantic 322
2. Jes­sops TR120

This is a pic­ture of an ide­al set­up:

Manual Telescope:

SKY WATCHER SKYLINER 200P is an excel­lent Tele­scope and you can buy a used one (on Ebay) for under £100.00. It is man­u­al and you will need to build a plat­form to raise it high­er as it will be low and your back will get tired. The Tele­scope comes with a tri­pod and you can eas­i­ly move it around to focus on the right areas.

This is SKY WATCHER SKYLINER 200p:

Computerised Telescope:

The big­ger the tube of the Tele­scope, the more light it lets in and you will get bet­ter vision. These Tele­scope have a GPS and a data­base and they will auto­mat­i­cal­ly move and focus on an object once you have them prop­er­ly aligned.

Stay away from cheap Ebay/no-name tele­scope even if they claim to have all of great features!The best for Moon­sight­ing (at bud­get prices) is Cele­stron 11049 NexS­tar 4 SE and more than suf­fi­cient for your needs. 5 SE, 6 SE and 8 SE are 5 inch, 6 inch and 8 inch tubes are more expen­sive but the elec­tron­ics are the same. Leave your tele­scope out in the open with all caps tak­en off for 15–20 min­utes before you begin to sight because the lens needs to get used to the tem­per­a­ture of the air and sur­round­ings. 

This is Cele­stron 11049 NexS­tar 4 SE:

DSLR Photography:

Your phone has a good enough Cam­era to take a pic­ture but it may not be good enough for low-light con­di­tions. Hold your phone against the lens and take a pic­ture.

You can buy a Nikon (D3400) or Canon EOS Rebel T7 / Canon EOS 2000D with a stan­dard lens and it will con­nect to the back of your tele­scope via an adap­tor (which you need to buy sep­a­rate­ly).

This is a Nikon (D3400) with a stan­dard lens:

This is a Canon EOS Rebel T7 with a stan­dard lens:

Tethering:

Your DSLR Cam­era can con­nect to a lap­top using a stan­dard HDMI cable. This means that you can look at the images on a huge screen instead of through a small eye­piece. You can also zoom your images etc.

This is a Cam­era attached to a Cele­stron 11049 NexS­tar 4 SE. Cam­era can then be con­nect­ed to your lap­top using a USB or HDMI cable: