Syawal 1425H sighting in Nigeria.
All the analysis below is for Port Harcourt, Nigeria although the conclusion is valid for the whole of Africa at least.
| Date | Moon above horizon? (Moonset after sunset?) | Age of new moon | Perhaps possible to see the moon? | From visibility calculation criteria? (historical observation by astronomers) |
| Thu, 11/11/2004 | NO! | |||
| Fri, 12/11/2004 | NO! | |||
| Sat, 13/11/2004 | YES | 26.78 h | YES | YES |
The moon was claimed to have been seen in Nigeria on Thu, 11/11/2004. However, Syawal should began earliest on Sunday, 14/11/2004 as the moon could not have been sighted until Saturday, 13/11/2004.
Please go through the analysis below to find out how the conclusion is reached.
MOON POSITION WITH RESPECT TO THE HORIZON AT SUNSET
The effort to sight the moon for Syawal was made on Thursday, 11th November 2004.
Astronomical calculation shows that it is actually impossible to sight the hilal for ramadhan that night since the moonsets at 5.21 pm that day, before the sunsets at 6.14 pm that day as indicated in the screenshot below. In other words, there was no moon to be seen!
The moon projection that day is as shown below where x-axis is time and y-axis is the altitude which also shows that the moon sets before the sun.
As seen in the screenshot below (red ovals), during sunset, the moon was actually 12 degrees below the horizon during sunset and it goes lower as the night progresses
AGE OF THE NEW MOON
But that's only part of the problem. For a crescent (hilal) to form, a new moon has to be formed first. But during sunset on 11th November, the age of the moon was 28 days. The new moon is calculated not to form until Friday, 12th November 2004, 3.28 pm.
It has been shown above that the moon was below the horizon at sunset, but even if it was above the horizon (which it wasn't) , the possibility of seeing a hilal is nil as the moon had not formed yet.
WHEN WAS SYAWAL SUPPOSE TO BEGIN THEN? SATURDAY (13th November 2004)?
Again, the answer is no. The simple reason being that the moonsets (6.13 pm) before sunsets (6.14) as seen in the screen capture above, hence again making it impossible to see the moon after sunset on 12th November. Even if the moon was above the horizon during sunset (which it wasn't), the age of the moon at that time was only 2 hours, which was never before visually sighted, even with telescope.
HOW ABOUT SYAWAL STARTING ON SUNDAY (14th November 2004)?
Let us look at this from the different angles for Saturday, 13th November.
Was the moon above the horizon after sunset? Yes, as seen from the screen capture above of the Lunar Phase software, indeed the moon sets about 56 minutes after sunset. The altitude of the moon is 12 degrees above the horizon at the time
Did the age of the moon exceeds 16 hours? Yes. In fact the age of the moon was almost 27 hours. Let us confirm this with the observation correllation developed by astronomists as included in MoonCalc 6.0
VISIBILITY CORRELATION
data/graphics/map from MoonCalc 6.0 by Dr. Monzur Ahmed
On Friday 12th Nov 04, the moonsighting is not possible as the moonset was before sunset. Hence the results indicated that the method used not applicable
data/graphics/map from MoonCalc 6.0 by Dr. Monzur Ahmed
On Saturday 13th Nov 04, the hilal can easily be sighted with naked eye.
CONCLUSION
Syawal 1425H should began on Sunday (14th November 2004 in Nigeria).
Those who celebrated Eid in Nigeria on Friday needs to replace (qada') the fasting for two days since Sunday should have been the Eid. The logic follows the fatwa by Dr. Yusuf Al-Qardawi's.
Those who celebrated Eid in Nigeria on Saturday needs to replace (qada') the fasting for one day.
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Editor's Note: Two software was used for this analysis, MoonCalc 6.0 (freeware) and LunarPhase V2.62 (shareware). Both software came with the same calculated moon position, age, moonset, sunset, etc.