First day of Eid Al Fitr will be on October 1 says Amateur Astronomers Group
WAM
Published: September 22, 2008, 15:45
Abu Dhabi: The first day of Eid Al Fitr will fall on Wednesday, October 1, 2008, according to the Amateur Astronomers Group (AAG) of the Emirates Heritage Club.
The group called for the sighting of the Shawwal 1429 Hijri Crescent at sunset of Tuesday, September 29, 2008, adding that the crescent will be born at 00hours, 12 minutes, 54 seconds after midnight of Monday.
Sakhr Abdullah Saif, chairman of the group, said the time of sighting the new crescent should be Tuesday at 6.10pm,18 hours after its birth, adding that the time is good enough to sight the moon with binoculars in the UAE, if the weather is clear and free from moist and dust.
He said the crescent can also be sighted with the naked eyes in the southern parts of the Sahara in Africa, the equatorial regions, Latin America, south American and Australia.
“In Arab and Islamic countries, the sighting places will include Nigeria and neighbouring countries, as well as in southern Sudan and Somalia,” he said, adding that it can also be sighted with the naked eyes in other Arab and Islamic countries if the weather was good for that, particularly in the southern half of the Arabian peninsula (southern part of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Oman), as well as in the Sahara region (Mali, Chad and Niger), southern parts of Egypt, Libya and Morocco, in addition to southern India, Malaysia and all islands of Indonesia.
